FIVE GO ON A STRATEGY AWAY DAY

five-go

famous-fiveTry to fathom the Famous Five in adulthood, old grist to the Millennial mill of clap trap commerce as they embark on their modern adventure, FIVE GO ON A STRATEGY AWAY DAY.

On securing a new job with large multinational corporation called Lupiter Funckstein, Julian realized his team was severely understaffed and promptly hired his childhood pals Anne, Dick and George. Ripping.

The harmony of their working relationship is threatened when they are required to attend a Strategy Away Day with all the manufactured tensions and stress of hot housed leadership games and fatuous team building exercises intended to “incentivise”, build “cohesiveness”, and create “outcomes”.

Things get off to a rather unjolly start when they discover the venue is to be shared with literary rivals, The Secret Seven, and that the Strategy Away Day is to be presided over by their slippery cousin, Rupert Kirrin, now touted by corporate culturists as “one of the exciting new voices within the field of entrepreneurial wellness and conceptual ideation,” a group coherence solution provider, par excellence. Cripes!

The plethora of platitudes, catch phrases, buzz words and the horror of hackneyed idioms just about capsize The Five’s chances of seizing the day. Dealing with Relaxologists empowering core capacities just about does their collective heads in, and to top it off, there seems to be a conspiracy perpetrated by The Secret Seven, to undermine their achievements.

Unabashedly and unashamedly fond of The Famous Five writer Bruno Vincent does not blight Blyton, he rather utilises them to parody Millennials’ follies, faults and foibles in a genuinely affectionate way. So much so it has the full support and imprimatur of the Enid Blyton estate. And the whole package comes with super illustrations by Eileen A. Soper and Ruth Palmer. Wizard!

Next year marks the 75th anniversary of the Famous Five in print. FIVE GO ON A STRATEGY AWAY DAY is one of five new adventures that include Five Give Up the Booze, Five Go Gluten Free, Five Go Parenting and Five on Brexit Island. Lashings of laughs and oodles of fun, say what!

FIVE GO ON A STRATEGY AWAY DAY is published by Quercus. Quirky!