A solid, suspenseful Wall Street tale.
Debut novelist Hemphill successfully portrays life working at a big bank.
It’s October 2007, months before the subprime lending crisis, and Sophie Landgraf is a fresh-out-of-college Wall Street analyst working on her first big deal. Overtired, overcaffeinated and overworked, Sophie is still adjusting to the dog-eat-dog world of banking. Vainly, and in typical The Devil Wears Prada mode, she attempts to balance work and home life, especially her relationship with Will, the shaggy-haired college boyfriend, who helped her grieve when her mother died in an auto accident. Growing up poor and lacking financial support are Sophie’s motivations for working in the financial sector. But she’s also smart, good with numbers and actually likes her job; it’s with mixed feelings that readers will watch her strive toward success. The other people on Sophie’s account are Vasu, the vice president who never sees his wife and child; Ethan, the sharklike head of their group; and Jake Hutchinson, a mostly wholesome CEO client. None are particularly nuanced, but all are more sympathetic than one might expect, and by telling parts of the story from each of their points of view, Hemphill goes deep into the murky moral waters in which they all swim. Other bleak themes, precisely brought to life, are the excessive dedication that banking expects of its employees, institutional sexism and the impossibility of friendship in business. The deal itself is arguably the real protagonist and the reason readers will eagerly turn pages. Hemphill pulls off the neat trick of making the complex financial transaction clear to lay readers without dumbing down her characters.
A solid, suspenseful Wall Street tale.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-5441-1457-9
Page Count: 309
Publisher: Amazon/New Harvest
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2013
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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