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OPENING BELLE

Name: OPENING BELLE
Author: Maureen Sherry
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1062-7

by Maureen Sherry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 2, 2016

So much fun, and educational too.

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Corporate sexism and the mortgage crisis are a laugh a minute...in this delightful comic novel, at least.

Belle Cassidy is a managing director at an investment banking firm called Feagin Dixon— she makes $700,000 a year plus an end-of-year bonus for 2007 that comes in just under $3 million. Sure, the money is great, but Belle is also a member of the Glass Ceiling Club—a group of women who have organized secretly to talk about the raging sexism of their work environment. This entails everything from ass-grabbing to frat-style office parties to the exclusion of women from top-level decision-making, including the risk management committee—a real-life fact which, according to former investment banker Sherry (Walls Within Walls, 2010), is at least partly responsible for the subprime mortgage disaster of 2008. In chapters with titles like "Herd on the Street," "Gentlemen Prefer Bonds," and "Dais of the Dicks," she evokes this luxurious yet disgusting world in juicy detail, from a mandatory softball game at a 15-acre estate in "Hedgistan, the area between New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut, where most hedge fund managers live," to the weekly chapel session at "a preschool so elite it had no name on the door, no website, no listing in the phone book," where "the billionaires sit along the front sides of the room" avoiding the "annoying millionaire parents who are pining for a playdate." To get her kids into this school, Belle has had to call in a favor from her ex-fiance, Henry Thomas Wilkins III, who soon turns up in her working life as a key player at one of her major clients. Good thing her husband, Bruce, a hunky, big-spending, nonworking dad, isn't the jealous type. While she's making you laugh, Sherry does an excellent job of explaining what exactly happened in the financial crisis and gives a rare picture of the wide range of ways women in the workplace deal with chauvinism, some as heroes, some as victims, and some as opportunists.

So much fun, and educational too.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5011-1062-7

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015

Categories:

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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ALL MY MOTHER'S LOVERS

by Ilana Masad ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 26, 2020

An intriguing but uneven debut.

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A debut novelist explores the complexities of love and grief.

Maggie Krause is in bed with her girlfriend when she gets the call: Her mother has just died in a car accident. When she returns to her childhood home, she finds her younger brother angry and her father paralyzed by grief. The discovery of a cache of letters that her mother, Iris, wanted delivered to five different men gives Maggie something to do besides coping with her family’s loss or processing her own feelings: She decides that she will find the strangers to whom these letters are addressed. This road trip is a journey of discovery for Maggie. She learns that her parents’ seemingly idyllic union was not quite what she thought it was; the affairs to which the book’s title refers are extramarital. As she gets to know the men her mother loved, Maggie also gets to know her mother better. And, of course, she begins to better understand herself. This setup is interesting, but the storytelling veers from the slow and slightly superficial to the…kind of kitschy. A scene with an all-seeing psychic is particularly hard to take seriously, and the whole narrative hinges on a big reveal that feels melodramatic and a bit cheap. Masad has chosen to surprise readers instead of providing them with information they need to understand Iris even though there are chapters narrated from her perspective. Getting glimpses of her trysts feels more voyeuristic than revealing. And the one letter we get to read seems macabre and manipulative—gaslighting from beyond the grave. Where the book succeeds is in depicting queer characters as multifaceted human beings who are not defined solely by their sexuality or gender. Maggie’s relationship problems aren’t because she’s a lesbian; they’re because she’s afraid of commitment. And it’s not often that fiction writers—or anyone, for that matter—depict women of middle age and beyond as beings who desire and wish to be desired.

An intriguing but uneven debut.

Pub Date: May 26, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5247-4597-4

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: March 1, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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WITHOUT MERIT

by Colleen Hoover ; illustrated by Brandon Adams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 3, 2017

This quirky, complex, and frustrating heroine will win hearts and challenge assumptions about family dysfunction and mental...

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With the help of unusual houseguests, a teenage girl who tries to rebel by airing her family’s dirty laundry cleans up her act instead.

To Merit Voss, the white picket fence around her house is the only thing normal about the family it contains. She lives in a converted church with her father, stepmother, and siblings, and although her parents have been divorced for years, her mother still lives in the basement, struggling with social anxiety. No one in her family is religious, so her brother Utah updates the church marquee every day with fun facts instead of Bible verses. Merit is less accomplished than her identical twin sister, Honor, so she likes to buy used trophies to celebrate her failures. But Honor seems to have a fetish for terminally ill boys, so it’s a surprise to Merit when Sagan, who is perfectly healthy, kisses Merit after mistaking her for her sister—and then reveals that he’s living in their house. Soon they have another houseguest, Luck, whose connection to the family makes Merit even more convinced she’s living in a madhouse. So why is everyone so angry at her? Merit has a love/hate relationship with her sister. She's conflicted by her feelings for Sagan, who leaves intriguing sketches (illustrated by Adams) around the house for her to decipher. She’s simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by Luck, who annoys her with his questions but is also her confidant. She can’t sit through dinner without starting a fight; she’s been skipping school for days; and when she decides to give her whole family the silent treatment, Sagan is the only one who notices. In fact, he and Luck are the only people in the house who recognize Merit’s quirks for what they really are—cries for help. And when Merit takes drastic measures to be heard, the fallout is both worse and much better than she feared. Hoover (It Ends With Us, 2016, etc.) does an excellent job of revealing the subtle differences between healthy teenage rebellion and clinical depression, and Merit’s aha moment is worthy of every trophy in her collection.

This quirky, complex, and frustrating heroine will win hearts and challenge assumptions about family dysfunction and mental illness in a life-affirming story that redefines what’s normal.