Bank
A Novel
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
In this entertaining debut novel, young investment bankers struggle to survive a world of sadistic bosses, nervous breakdowns and elevator romances.
Every July, a fresh crop of college grads in spiffy new suits arrive at top investment banks—where their big money dreams collide with the realities of office life. In this entertaining debut novel, a stressed-out guy analyst nicknamed Mumbles recounts how he and his cohorts struggle to survive corporate purgatory while finding ways to strike back at the system—and maybe, just maybe, eek out some sort of personal life.
Fueled by a constant flow of Starbucks coffee, Mumbles and his friends secretly film a despised colleague's boardroom romp with an assistant, creating footage they plan to broadcast at the company's holiday party. But true gratification comes only when they finally stand up to the bank's evil minions who routinely pile on a weekend's worth of work on a Friday afternoon.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bledin's debut, a survey of rookie investment bankers struggling to survive the Street, is a sometimes successful menagerie of toady, loathsome bosses, wry observations from the Starbucks queue and sophomoric pranks. Narrator Mumbles and his friends Clyde (who "just doesn't give a damn"), Postal Boy (whose twitching eye and high-strung disposition has everyone "convinced he's going to lose it one day") and the Defeated One (who endures the 100-hour workweeks to support his girlfriend and his coke habit) endeavor to master the art of the spreadsheet and maintain their ever-diminishing relationship with the outside world while keeping their shirts starched, their bloodstream caffeinated and their imaginations greased with fantasies of flight or revenge. A veteran of the finance sector, Bledin knows his turf, and though he brings little new to the office lit picnic, his tale of cubicle rancor and awkward romances is well-paced, humorous and endearing.
