King of the Mississippi

Starred review from May 1, 2019
Two alphas battle to be top dog at a global consultancy in this amusing satire on business, ambition, and entitlement. Brock Wharton, at 33, reckons he has logged "a lifetime of doing everything right." Quarterback at the University of Texas, married money, Harvard Business School, and on the fast track to becoming managing director of Houston-based Cambridge Consulting Group. But while interviewing new hires, he meets his nemesis, Mike Fink, who seems comfortable being all wrong for CCG. Weak GPA at Tulane, majored in English literature, and sartorially unsplendid: "Navy double-breasted suit he wore as if he were a redneck admiral at a regatta that Wharton would never enter." But Fink's resume includes serving as a Green Beret in the Middle East. So while Wharton thinks of the military as "the last stop for the talentless," CCG's managing director feels that "in our post 9/11 world, these heroes are a lot more real to clients than another fresh-faced MBA." Wharton soon realizes Fink is no hick. During a session with client Dr. Pepper, Wharton spouts CCG's usual mix of jargon, arrogance, and newish ideas. The wily Fink undermines his slideshow and charms the CEO with a paean to corporate tradition. Freedman (School Board, 2014), a former Green Beret himself, uses Fink to skewer the style and substance of consultancies, Houston's moneyed class, and male egos in general--the novel's women barely rise above cliché. The scattershot satire can be rough or forced, but it has a compelling energy, like Rodney Dangerfield's shtick. Freedman's debut was a broadly comic look at business interests in Houston's politics as a charismatic teen vies with an oil executive for a school board seat. Maybe there's another city portrait in the works, something akin to William Kennedy's Albany novels. A solid entertainment from a writer of considerable talent and promise.

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May 13, 2019
A towering monument to arrogance faces off against a wily underminer in Freedman’s precise and pungent satire of the business world (after School Board). Brock Wharton is a successful Houston business consultant and, at least according to him, the smartest guy in the room. He’s on partner track at his consultancy when he’s assigned to train a new hire, Mike Fink, an earthy ex–Special Forces operative who sees Brock as less a mentor than a target. As Fink endlessly capitalizes on his veteran status to win the trust of clients and engages in various forms of professional sabotage, Brock develops his own counterinsurgency (as he dubs it) to get rid of Fink, whose very existence is an affront to Brock’s Harvard-burnished values. It’s not ruining anything to say that the two end up conspiring together on a far-flung assignment, but the road to their detente is never a forced one. Freedman laces the narrative with acid observations (“Like Islamists, Houstonians shared a fanaticism for knocking down landmark buildings”) and fills it with jargon, though the business doublespeak conceit wears thin. Freedman deserves credit for sticking with such a hubristic antihero; his darkly comic skewering of capitalism is all the more potent for it. This is sly, sharp fun.

June 1, 2019

Brock Wharton, former star quarterback and Harvard B-School graduate, oozes white privilege and is cock of the walk at a prestigious Houston consulting firm. Over his extreme objections, the firm hires eccentric, boastful ex-vet Mike Fink (who claims kinship to the legendary King of the Keelboats), and the two become instant enemies. As much as Wharton conspires to get Fink fired, the chameleonlike Fink keeps succeeding. They work against each other but are forced together in this takedown of corporate culture, male identity, and American ideals. Their path leads through Silicon Valley, to a hilarious football game (with Fink the unlikely hero) against a rival firm, to Iraq and the corporate war that never ends. Funny in a nuanced way if not a laugh-out-loud read, the latest from Freedman (School Board) is at the same time serious in intent. The first third, however, is overloaded with marketing/economic terminology, which will cause many readers to skim a lot or simply quit; the last section behaves somewhat similarly, with an abundance of military terminology. VERDICT In the end, some readers might feel that the concept exceeds the execution. But the Wharton/Fink bonding is worth the ride. For fans of literary fiction.--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2019
All-American alpha male Brock Wharton is the hypercompetitive rainmaker at a white-shoe, Houston-based management consulting firm in Freedman's blistering satire. Following his college football career with the Texas Longhorns, he matriculated at the Harvard Business School and married into a wealthy Texas oil family. His upward career trajectory seems assured until the arrival of Mike Fink, a brash, uncouth Special Forces veteran whose no-nonsense, folksy charisma wins the hearts and minds of the firm's clients. This hyperliterate, darkly comic skewering of modern masculinity pits the two combatants in a battle for supremacy via quasi-military tactics and uproariously funny, cringe-inducing high jinks. Among the many other targets in Freedman's crosshairs are corporate culture, TED Talk pseudoscientific self-empowerment mantras, the military-industrial complex, and male identity. As each man struggles to conform to his own masculine ego, Brock and Mike are given a consulting assignment in an Iraqi war zone. This final set piece brilliantly illustrates the myriad aspects of conflict?with others and one's self. Freedman masterfully blends humor with thought-provoking and poignant insights. The dialogue hums and the two main characters are colorful, memorable, and thoroughly human, each on his own treacherous path toward the discovery of what it truly means to be a man. For fans of Ben Fountain and Jonathan Tropper.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)