An intriguing mystery set in the world of toy design. (PopCo - Scarlett Thomas)

Member Name: FairyG

Product:	PopCo - Scarlett Thomas
Date:	19/08/09 (48 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A fascinating read.

Disadvantages: The ending is wound up too suddenly.

Popco is a contemporary novel set in Devon. The title refers to the name of a fictitious toy company, the third biggest in the world after Mattel and Hasbro. It is told from the first person perspective of Alice Butler, a young woman who works for Popco in their Ideation and Design department.

Almost everyone in Ideation and Design is young, very cool and addicted to following fashion trends, which currently mean everyone dresses like college kids from Tokyo. Alice stands out as she has her own style, but her dilemma is, if she dresses like them she fits in, and if she doesn't dress like them she is cool, daring and individualistic and therefore still fits in.

At the beginning of the novel, Alice travels to the Popco Open World event at the company's 'thought camp' at Hare Hall, a vast mansion in Devon. She is preoccupied with a new toy she is designing, an addition to a series of spy toys she has created. Alice is specially suited for this kind of work due to her code-cracking skills, something she has learned from her grandparents, who were involved in deciphering codes during the war.

At Hare Hall, Alice meets up with her colleague Dan, a videogame designer, and after the initial presentation by the CEO they are summoned back to a meeting of selected employees. These have been chosen for their special skills to stay on after the Popco Open World conference, to secretly work on a new toy design. Alice agrees to stay, but is puzzled when she begins to receive coded messages from someone at Hare Hall.

She also starts to become ill and spends a lot of time in her room taking Bach Flower remedies as she recovers. More coded messages arrive and she tries to find out who is sending them, she also reflects on the past that brought her here. In a series of flashbacks we find out about her upbringing with her grandparents and her grandfather's lifelong obsession with solving codes. It's all connected to a locket that Alice's grandfather had given her containing a secret code she has never managed to crack, but which has something to do with the location of buried treasure.

Popco is densely packed with stories within stories. There is the story of the buried treasure, the story of her grandparents, and Alice's own story of her school and college years. As Alice tries to think up ideas for new toys, she reflects back on the trends and social codes of her school days that influenced her own purchases. It reveals the cynical manipulation of children through their need to fit in with their friends, and the way toys are designed to be collectible to encourage brand loyalty.

There are strong parallels with Lewis Carroll's novel Through the Looking Glass. In Carroll's book, Alice becomes the pawn of the White Queen. In Popco, Alice is uneasily aware she is a pawn of the toy company. In Carroll's book there is a character called Haigha, which resembles the March Hare in Alice in Wonderland. In Popco, Alice is staying at Hare Hall. Both Alice's have a cat. Lewis Carroll was also a skilled mathematician and an inventor of games and puzzles, much like Alice's grandfather in Popco.

It all makes for an enjoyable, although complex read. It's a heavily researched novel, crammed with facts about mathematics, cryptanalysis and codes, as well as the powerful cultural influence of global corporations. Alice Butler is an interesting, quirky and well-rounded character, although other characters don't tend to come across so clearly, something that's harder to portray with the use of the first person narrator. The popular culture of the early 1990's is vividly brought to life, as is life in the 1600's. Scarlett Thomas has a talent for switching time periods and adopting the voices that come with them.

However, it's noticeable that the character Alice is very much like the character of Ariel in Scarlett Thomas's later novel The End of Mr Y. Both characters smoke, dabble with drugs, and are sexually promiscuous. Both also use Bach Flower remedies. Both are also fascinated with mind experiments and are trying to solve the mystery locked in a printed text. It's beginning to look somewhat formulaic.

Popco is a highly entertaining read and an eye-opener about the world of toy design, but is let down by a final twist that is something of a disappointment after such a long and complicated build up. It all seems to wind up too quickly, with several things left unresolved and unanswered.

First published in Great Britain in 2004, by Fourth Estate, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.

This review is also on Helium under my pen name A Marshall

Summary: A good read, but Thomas's books are beginning to look formulaic