Arriving 12 years after Anita Hill pointed a finger at Clarence Thomas, this tale of corporate sexual harassment feels slightly musty. Bing aims to satirize the litigation-happy business world, one in which the novel's seemingly innocent title, when said by a male boss to his female subordinate, can be grossly misinterpreted. And so it goes when CaroleAnne Winter, a gorgeous, highly unstable executive assistant, is showered with kindnesses by her well-meaning boss, Robert "Harb" Harbert. CaroleAnne's lunacy gives the book an absurd comic edge: In her mind even the word "bagels" is salacious. Apart from the humor, though, Bing covers familiar ground, and his send-up of white-collar pretension grows tiresome: One sentence begins, "As I masticated the aggressively raw tuna in the ubiquitous salade Nicoise that is now the mandatory luncheon of the day..." That's a mouthful even for Harvardized corporate bigwigs.
NOVEL
