Bank: A Novel

THE NOVEL

I’ve heard BANK described in many different ways. One reviewer called it “The Devil Wears Spreadsheets.” Another dubbed it a Sex And The City for guys. When I’m at a house party, and I’m forced to condense the heart-staggering genius of my novel into one sentence so I can relay it to a severely inebriated friend before she passes out on the kitchenette floor, I tend to describe it as “a novel about investment bankers, but not investment banking.”

That’s the thing: BANK isn’t about spreadsheets, or accretion/dilution models, or any of the other mind-numbing tasks that are heaped upon unsuspecting banking newbies. These tasks are boring enough in real life, let alone having to write about them. Rather, BANK is about the “quarterlife crisis” phenomenon, namely those first few years out of college when you’re torn between the financially lucrative but soul-crushing corporate jobs and the alternative routes that are far more self-rewarding but will probably (if you’re being honest with yourself) never pay the bills.

It’s not something lofty like the transience of human experience, or the xenophobia of immigration, but this “quarterlife crisis” theme is something that is extremely pertinent to me (i.e., I’m still smack-dab in the middle of mine) and to most of my friends. While BANK is unquestionably a light-hearted read, it should resonate with anybody going through a similar phase of doubt and uncertainty.

Or if that’s too opaque, here is the description from the back of the book:

Every summer, a fresh crop of college graduates clad in tailor-made suits fills the offices of investment banking firms in cities across the country, each newly minted analyst longing for big money, even if it means sacrificing anything resembling a normal life.

In BANK, David Bledin’s hilarious first novel, Mumbles - a decent, overworked guy simply trying to survive this corporate purgatory - and his cohorts find a way to strike back at the system. Fueled by a constant flow of Starbucks coffee, they take on such tasks as secretly filming a despised colleague’s boardroom romp with an assistant, planning to broadcast the footage at the company’s holiday party. But true gratification comes only when they start standing up to the BANK’s evil taskmasters, who have no qualms about piling on a weekend’s worth of work on a Friday afternoon.

With its sharp comedy, its episodes of inspired hijinks, and its glimpse into a world of fleeting elevator romances and not-so-infrequent nervous breakdowns, BANK is a riotous novel that, at its heart, is about figuring out what really matters in life.

READ THE PROLOGUE OF BANK!