SOURCE: “Mocking Absurdities in British Industry,” in Christian Science Monitor, March 8, 1989, p. 11.

In the following review, Tirrell offers a positive assessment of Nice Work.

When Vic Wilcox, managing director of J. Pringle & Sons, awakens on Monday, Jan. 13, 1986, he is unaware that his world is about to be turned, slowly but irrevocably, upside down.

Under the auspices of a government-concocted program for “Industry Year,” he will acquire a “shadow”—an academic from the local university whose job it will be to follow him about once a week, thus fostering understanding between industry and academia. So begins Nice Work, David Lodge’s witty novel of British industry today, and winner of the £20,000 (＄34,800) Sunday Express Book of the Year Award.

Naturally, since this is a David Lodge book, the “shadow” is the very antithesis of the rough and ready Vic. An ardent feminist, Robyn Penrose—the shadow—is a theory-spouting leftist...