Throughout, ''Louse'' nicely lampoons the bad employer's mandatory cheer, the phony equality of office colleagues, the exploitative appeals to team spirit and high standards. The novel's symbolism sometimes dampens the storytelling, so that Blank's sedition seems less thrilling than it should be. A related problem is Louse's passivity. We keep waiting for the worm to turn. ''We were complicit. We could have defied a little.
Louse says regretfully at the end, and the reader is forced to agree.
The only real player is the supine boss, Poppy. Still, this ''Louse'' sticks to you, for its wit and imaginative vision. We see most of the how's but few of the why's. Which is exactly the way David Grand seems to want it. David Sacks is the author of the Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World.