“5 Cartier Gold Stars”
Dealbook and The New York Times published a sequel to the their previous piece on Wall Street fiction. Again, Kevin Roose is very funny. Here’s what he wrote about The Gods of Greenwich:
THE GODS OF GREENWICH
In brief: Jimmy Cusack, an unlucky money manager, gets a high-paying job with Cy Leeser, a prickly hedge fund mogul who wants to tank an Icelandic bank for fun and profit. The cast includes a nurse with a violent streak, a trader nicknamed “The Geek,” and a wife with prosopagnosia, a condition that impairs the ability to recognize faces. Greenwich, of course, plays a starring role.
Best pep talk, jilted Greenwich wife edition: “We won’t be taken for granted. We won’t bear children for our husbands. We won’t trade our careers for diapers, while our husbands cavort around the globe. Eating what they want. Unzipping their flies for whom they want. We won’t watch passively from the sidelines as our husbands leer at younger women.”
Thing we can’t actually imagine anyone in Greenwich saying: Calling the nonrich “oxygen thieves.”
Thing we can totally imagine someone in Greenwich saying: “This rosé is all the rage on St. Barth.”
Aaron Sorkin School of Dialogue award:
“Bentwing dropped like a rock at the end of August.”
“Can you bring me into your quadrant?” asked Geek.
“December, April, and September—those months all followed bad markets.”
“The Dow was up during July and August.”
“Bentwing got smoked,” replied Cusack.
“Sounds six sigma.”Overall realism score: 5 Cartier gold stars
The New York Times describes my novels as “money porn,” “a red-hot franchise,” and “glittery thrillers about fiscal malfeasance.” Through fiction I explore the dark side of money and the motivations of those who have it, want more, and will steamroll anybody who gets in their way.