Five Go On A Strategy Away Day

Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups #6

by Bruno Vincent

Enid Blyton's books are beloved the world over and The Famous Five have been the perennial favourite of her fans. Now, in this new series of Enid Blyton for Grown-Ups, George, Dick, Anne, Julian and Timmy confront a new challenge: what exactly is this puzzling scrape referred to as a 'strategy away day'?

The Five have gone on their greatest adventure yet - to become an even better team! They are booked into an exciting hotel right next to the jolly motorway services, where the nice (if somewhat nervous and sweating and depressed) man teaches them a number of exercises that will make them work better. But wait! Who's been sneaking messages through the hotel dumb waiter about secret assignations? Is there a smuggler's plot afoot? Or is Shelly from Production shagging Postroom Luke? All will be revealed . . .

Ideal for those who are allergic to corporate jargon and will throw a sickie before having to play a trust game with colleagues.

Genres: Humor, Fiction, Comedy, Adult, Adventure

104 pages, Hardcover

Published November 3, 2016

About the author

Bruno Vincent was a bookseller and book editor before he was an author. His humour books for grown-ups, co-authored with Jon Butler, were national bestsellers and have been translated into seven languages. The TUMBLEWATER books are his first for children.

Reviews

[Sonja Rosa Lisa ♡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Die Fünf Freunde sind erwachsen geworden. Sie sind jetzt in ihren 20ern und stehen im Berufsleben. Alle vier arbeiten in einem Team und werden nun zu einer Teambuilding-Maßnahme geschickt. Sogar Hund Timmie darf mit. Dort stehen verschiedene Spielchen auf dem Plan, aber wirklich Spaß, wie es der Titel verlauten lässt, haben sie eigentlich nicht.
Ich fand die Geschichte interessant. Ich kenne die Fünf Freunde natürlich aus meiner Kindheit als Kinder-Detektive, die viele abenteuerliche Rätsel gelöst haben. Sie jetzt als Erwachsene zu erleben, ist seltsam irgendwie.
Aber ich mochte ich die Geschichte.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A rather jolly little romp through the madness which is corporate team-building. If you’ve ever been forced to suffer through one of these, you’ll recognise the madness; even down to drinking the night before because you’ll not be at work the next day. And paying for it!

True to the spirit of Enid Blyton and nicely told, it’s worth a quick read!

[Ivy-Mabel Fling · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this up from a box outside someone's house and thought it was one of the original Enid Blyton books, which I so much enjoyed as a child. It turned out to be a parody the originals and a send-up of modern business culture - it is somewhat cynical, would (I think) make Enid Blyton turn in her grave but it did have a point (several points!) to make about some present-day fads. Perhaps it is meant for grumpy old women and that is why I liked it!

[Freya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I 'enjoyed' this book in that having attended a number of experiential learning days / away days / team-building days (delete as appropriate), my mouth twisted with wry amusement while reading this. From the endless buzz words and phrases to sometimes having to perform exercises you'd rather not do, this poked fun at it all, which was nice!

[Sharni · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extra star for the Secret Seven showing up!!!

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ticked the nostalgia box for me, as well as giving me a modern laugh. A short but perceptive story about team building exercises was funny, at times vivacious and very current. While Vincent presents the frustrations I expect anyone who had been on this kind of event has felt, the humour was heightened by its presentation through the "Famous Five". Vincent has done a solid job of updating the characters and capturing the voice. A good laugh.

[Hastings75 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was brilliant!

It brought back memories of a series that I read all of as a kid (fond memories) and memories of every strategy/group hug day I have been on for work (not so fond)!

Everything from Julian's hangover because he had "the day off" through to the food on offer through to personality trait tests! Hilarious!

Bruno Vincent has done an outstanding job satirising the corporate world, whilst also taking a dig at Enid Blyton's character's personalities!

The comments re the "3 unknown Secret Seven members" were harsh and had me in stitches!

Bring on the next ones!

[Julia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Halt ungefähr so lustig wie ein richtiges 5 Freunde Buch.

[Shauna · Rating 3 out of 5]

An amusing read. The Five don't get off to the best of starts on their team building exercises and, to make matters worse, the Secret Seven are in a rival team! Some nice touches of humour but not enough for a 4 star rating.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I surprised myself with how much I enjoyed this parody take on the Famous Five. I was a big FF fan as a kid and I wasn't sure whether this would be sacrilege but no, it just summed up my thoughts as an adult should I reread these again! I loved the use of the original illustrations too! I will hunt out the rest of this series!

[Hymerka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Тут така історія: я роками купую вживані британські видання на місцевому секонді. Ясна річ, вибору там нема – бери, шо є, або гуляй, зате коштують вони копійки. І от одного разу трапилася мені ця книжечка. "Це ж Інід Блайтон, — подумала собі я. — What can possibly go wrong?" І хоч я не чула, щоб серед 100500 її книжок були й такі, що розповідають про доросле життя Знаменитої П'ятірки, але ж їх 100500, хіба всі запам'ятаєш?

Так от, почнімо з того, що це ніяка не Інід Блайтон, а який Бруно Вінсент, який, походу, написав цілу отаку серію, фантазуючи про те, якими стали в дорослому житті герої Блайтон. Лише погляньте на ці назви:

Five Give Up the Booze
Five on Brexit Island
Five Go Gluten Free

Тобто це чистої води стьоб над улюбленими героями дитинства. Конкретно в цьому томі Пʼятірка вирушає на корпоратив в якесь задуп'я, де вони гратимуть в численні тімбілдінг ігри, які всі ми так любимо (ні) і покажуть себе цілковими лузерами у кожній з них.

[River Song · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 1/2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Die vier Freunde (Geschwister) Julian, Dick, Anne , Cousine George und Hund Timmy , alle inzwischen erwachsen, werden von ihrem Chef zu einem Wochenende auf dem Land gezwungen, um mit Spielen Arbeitsmoral und Teamgeist zu stärken...

Mit viel schwarzem Humor und den Original Zeichnungen von Eileen A. Soper.

Ich hatte viel Spaß beim Lesen... und habe mit den fünf Freunden mitgelitten, bis zum herrlich absurden Ende.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sehr kurz, aber flüssig zu lesen. Das Verbrechen kam aber kaum (bzw nur auf den letzten 20 Seiten) vor und es ist ein wenig unrealistisch, dass alle im gleichen Unternehmen arbeiten. Aber das Buch ist gerade am Ende witzig und ich finde die Idee, ein Buch über die Gruppe für Erwachsene zu schreiben, sehr schön.

[Sunshine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read all The Famous Five originals with my reading bud' and we've been adding our own flavour of humour to them for years. With the help of Enid's writing style which offers up some very low hanging fruit 🍑🍌 in the innuendo department, Bless you Enid, you're a treasure I hold dear to my heart.

This book offers up a great extension to the series if you've been missing The Five for all too long. You don't even need to add in your own comments such as ...said Julian the misogynistic twat. It's all right here for you to enjoy, ready-processed and packaged into individual mouthfuls such as this gem.

You'll love it but with that same feeling you get with a big surprise double yolker...delighted but knowing when they were misshapen and had the odd tuft of feather and shit on them they still tasted better when you opened them up and they were pure gold inside.

[Teena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not quite clever enough. It has been popular recently to rewrite classics in a modern setting (e.g. The Jane Austen Project). Some of these rewritings are more successful than others. Sending the grownup Famous Five characters on a team building, strategy day, where their biggest competitors are the Secret Seven, is fleetingly entertaining but then I lost interest. I won't be reading any others in the series.

[Oliver Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was somewhere in between completely taking the piss out of ‘corporateness’ (which I enjoyed) and a story about 5 friends on a day out. The story itself was a bit silly and bizarre. All in all, just a book I read because we had it on the shelf.

Hey, only took me a couple hours to read though!

[Michael Hintermayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hab die Audioversion gehört. War ganz unterhaltsam.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty naff xD there were some really funny satirical jabs at the real books and pointed commentary about professional development schemes but lots of boring filler around it.

[Danica Elle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another hilarious adult take on Famous Five, written by Bruno Vincent. I did enjoy the Halloween one ‘five go bump in the night’ that I read last year…and when I found this in an opshop today I had to grab it!
In this one the Five are forced to go on a team building retreat for the company Julian works for (he got Anne, Dick and George jobs there too, surprise. Haha) and they have to do a bunch of ridiculous games and orienteering etc…and typical Famous Five mysteries and misadventure ensues…
I laughed out loud, quite a few times and appreciated the involvement of the Secret Seven in the story, especially the cheeky tidbit at the end!
I’m going to keep an eye out for more of this series! Cos my nostalgic love of the originals, allows me to really enjoy these grown-up/tongue in cheek parody versions.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parody books seem to be in vogue at present; walk into any bookshop, and the chances are you will be confronted by a large table spread with such things as We're All Going on a Bar Hunt in the first minute. I normally don't buy into bookish trends, preferring to choose my own, often marginally obscure, reads at my leisure. When I spotted that the Famous Five had been updated for the twenty-first century, however, I couldn't bring myself to let the books pass me by.

I was an enormous fan of Enid Blyton as a child, and all of my copies of the Famous Five series have been passed down by my mother, a once avid reader of the series herself. We both laughed mirthfully at Five Go Gluten Free and Five on Brexit Island when they plopped through the letterbox just before Christmas. The other two titles which I purchased on a great deal from The Book People were the slightly less amusing Five Go Parenting and Five Go On a Strategy Away Day.

I'm still reeling from the Brexit decision, and thought I would begin with that parody. The storyline deals with the gang avoiding real life on the night of the referendum, and retiring to George's territory of Kirrin Island for a brief holiday. A fierce war soon ensues between George, a staunch remainer, and Julian, a traitor who voted to leave the EU. George is so horrified that she makes the decision that Kirrin Island itself should leave Britain, and holds her own referendum to that effect. Here, Vincent provides rather a light take on politics, which is both humorous and well-informed. The characters are still similar to their childhood counterparts, something exacerbated with the use of the series' original illustrations. I felt myself very much disliking Julian in this volume due to his beliefs, whereas as a child I had been relatively indifferent to him. Five on Brexit Island will not heal the pain of the referendum, but it is clever and well-crafted, and provides a bit of light relief.

Five Go Gluten Free was next for me. Rather than choosing to follow a gluten free diet for medical reasons, Anne - very much a fan of health fads - decides that the whole group should cut out the majority of the foodstuffs that they so love; no pies, chips, or beer going forward. I found this volume the most funny of the four which I have read, particularly as I so associate the majority of Blyton's child characters with a very British love of picnics and midnight feasts. The Famous Five are always eating, so the challenge of macrobiotic and wholefoods proves highly problematic. There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments here, and a plethora of amusing one-liners. In this book particularly, the five translate very well to the modern world, and there is a marvellous feel of the utmost nostalgia to it.

My penultimate parody was Five Go Parenting, in which the group are given cousin Rupert Kirrin's baby; he and his Eastern European wife have been put in prison after another one of their illegal schemes, and six-month-old Lily comes to live in the surprisingly incredibly spacious London flat which the five share. This was an amusing look into the world of parenting by those who were utterly unsure as to what to do, or how much the addition of a tiny human could change their way of life. Witty and well-executed, Vincent's writing in this volume particularly echoes Blyton's. I would deem Five Go Parenting a splendid tongue-in-cheek gift for the new parent, or a funny slice of nostalgia for those whose children are a little older.

Five Go on a Strategy Away Day was my least favourite of the series by far. I awarded it a three-star rating, but didn't find it that funny at all, and indeed, there were no laughing aloud moments for me. In the book, the four human members of the group who, of course, work with one another, head into the countryside for a team bonding session. It culminates in an orienteering exercise, in which they are effectively up against all of the members of the Secret Seven. I did enjoy this merging of the groups, but found that here, the storyline was a touch lacking.

At just over 100 pages each, Bruno Vincent's Blyton parodies are the perfect reads to give as gifts, or to settle down with yourself if you have an hour or two to spare.

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really excited having received this as a Christmas present this year, however after finishing it I was left feeling quite disappointed. The book just isn't funny at all! I've noticed from other user reviews that this is often regarded as the least favourite in the range, so maybe I started off on the wrong foot. I very much doubt I'll be buying another.

[Simon Tuson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun enjoyable read... no need to concentrate

[The Book Squirrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story a lot! There were still hits and misses with the illustrations (the image for "we're going to do some role play" was perfect, but others didn't quite capture the caption. Many were wildly misplaced - whoever was on layout for this series needs a smack upside the head; "you had one job!").
The inclusion of the Secret Seven was brilliant, and it made perfect fun of these corporate team building days. "Our enemy is cliche. So I want you to think outside of the box and give it a hundred and ten percent" [sideways laughing face emoji].

You should read Five at the office Christmas party before this one. Five at the Office Christmas Party

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a children's book

A very quick (under an hour) and fun read full of nostalgia. I loved Famous Five as a child and now they're all grown up!

Forced to attend a team building day out in the country, the Famous Five bump into the Secret Seven. Determined his team will win, Julian proudly takes the lead. As the team building exercises progress, tempers fray and it looks like the Five will end the day not speaking. As they set out on an outward bound challenge, the secret Seven team are heading up the team leader board, with the Famous Five trailing behind. When the Five over hear a conversation in a barn while sheltering from the rain the much-loved adventurers have to pull together as a team again to save their jobs. But will they beat the Secret Seven?

[Louise Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

ha ha so funny especially if u have ever read the adventures of the famous five it would also appeal to people who have ever been on a team building exercise character building . the characters were the same as a children which was good to see George trying to play it tough Ann goody goody dick trying to compete with Julian who wants to rule the roost ha it was so funny when the secret 7 joined in with the fun and of course just plain had to e a mystery to kind of solve you dont have to have read the kids book to enjoy just that brings back a delightful childhood !!!!! going to look out for more

[Arvind · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up on a lark, fueled by nostalgia and a deep desire to see corporate events flayed.

This book did not disappoint on either count. It's interesting to see the personalities that the adult Famous Five have been given (not very flattering, particularly Julian), and the appearance of the Secret Seven as the constant thorn in their sides is fun. And I could certainly identify with the whimsical pointlessness of certain types of corporate events.

It's a very breezy if unsubstantial read. I would have liked something with a bit more meat to it and something approaching a plot, but I suppose that isn't really the point of the book.

On the whole, it was alright. I'm told the others in the series of "adult" Famous Five books are even better, so I plan to check them out.

[Stacey Broadbent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another hit from Bruno Vincent! I love that the Secret Seven were in this one too. The competitiveness between both groups was rather entertaining.

Away on a work team building excursion, the five find their teamwork to be lacking. Turning on each other, they stumble through each event in a desperate attempt to beat the seven.

I love the exercises they had to do; relaxation techniques, leading the blind team leader, orienteering. Things that are meant to make you band together as a team. Only it didn’t seem to work so well for the five. And those blasted Seven always seemed to best them!

Another well written story that had me giggling.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this silly, funny send up of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books for children, we meet “the five” as adults, all working for the same firm. As the title suggests, everyone at the firm is sent to the country for a strategy day, and the author has great fun mocking the ridiculous team-building exercises that are so often a part of these days. When the smug Secret Seven also appear at the strategy day, the supposed, intense rivalry between the two groups is exploited to more comic effect. There are some major improbabilities in the storyline but, as the whole book is a spoof, it is easy to overlook these flaws. I’ll look forward to reading other titles in the series.

[Paul Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

[Quercus] (2013). HB. 1/13. 104 Pages. Purchased from The Hospice of St. Francis Charity Shop (Marshalswick).

Humour, here, hinges upon the adult mutation of Enid Blyton’s vile creations coupled with lampooned corporate-babble.

For me, neither really comes off.

In the former case, because the originals were more appalling.

In the latter, because I hear far worse - every day - in my own workplace.

For all that, competently executed and somewhat amusing.

Needs an injection of mustard.

Oddly, no attempt has been made to coordinate illustrations and text; for instance the picture on page 9 matches up with page 101.

[Sara Eames · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light-hearted parody of the Enid Blyton's Famous Five books. This one is well-written and amusing in places. A very quick and easy read and I would recommend it to fans of the Famous Five (but maybe not if you were a fan of the Secret Seven - if you read this you'll understand why lol ;)). If you have ever been on this sort of "team-building" event, you will almost certainly appreciate this book - it captures the characters of the Famous Five and sets them up perfectly. I will probably be reading more in this series.