On the Floor
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the City everything has a price.
At the age of twenty-eight, Dubliner Geri Molloy has put her troubled past behind her to become a major player at Steiner's investment bank in London, earning £850k a year doing business with a reclusive hedge fund manager in Hong Kong who, in return for his patronage, likes to ask her about Kant and watch while she eats exotic Asian delicacies.
For five years Geri has had it all, but in the months leading up to the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1991, her life starts to unravel. Abandoned by her corporate financier boyfriend, in the grip of a debilitating insomnia, and drinking far too much, Geri becomes entangled in a hostile takeover involving her boss, her client and her ex. With her career on the line as a consequence, and no one to turn to, she is close to losing it, in every sense.
Taut and fast-paced, On the Floor is about making money and taking risks; it's about getting away with it, and what happens when you're no longer one step ahead; ultimately, though, it's a reminder to never, ever underestimate the personal cost of success.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This 2012 Orange Prize nominee from Campbell (Loss Adjustor), a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, punctures the seamy darkness of banking with acute observations of being "the skirt amongst men." A gift for math helped Geri Molloy trade her meager Irish beginnings for a top trader post in the early '90s at British investment banking firm Steiner, where she mistrusts but uses her male coworkers and boss. Beholden to aggressive client Felix Mann, Geri goes to Hong Kong and suffers through local delicacies like turtle blood in order to secure his business. For her boss, she gathers intelligence on one of Felix's more volatile investments. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, as Geri's office braces for record profits, she loses her taste for the big ticket. The excesses enjoyed by Steiner's traders mask a desperate need for success that will resonate with readers, and the office's brutal gender politics which leads her to compose a cutting "Rule Book for Wannabe Female Bankers" predominates over Geri's more sentimental moments, such as when she lies in bed with a bottle of vodka instead of the boyfriend who thrived after leaving her. Though an open-ended resolution may frustrate some, Geri's self-aware reenactment of Wall Street (a film the traders see as a "reconfirmation that greed is good and lunch is for wimps") is a heart-pounding ride.
