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REVIEWS
The
Sunday Paper - Friday,
December 28, 2007
Gold
Star Books - By Rachel Mason
"A
reader remembers the year’s outstanding reading
During
the last year, I spent most of my free time reading. I cracked
the covers on all kinds of books, ranging from novels and memoirs
to kids’ books and chick lit. I read so much, it’s
hard for me to remember every title. But in the past year, several
of them stood out.
Though
I spend a good deal of time in an office, for some reason, I still
manage to enjoy reading about people’s work lives. “Bank”
by David Bledin ($13.99, Back Bay Books) made me especially thankful
that I don’t work for a huge investment bank. Still, reading
about the characters’ miserable jobs in this first-person
novel was really fun. Though the narrator, who’s called
Mumbles by his work buddies, often sleeps at his office instead
of at home, he still seems to like his job at least a little.
Perhaps it’s the daily coffee runs, the cheap lunches or
his insanely large paycheck.
While
“Bank” is not exactly “Office Space,”
it certainly falls into the same category. And I, for one, have
yet to grow tired of stories inspired by all the ridiculous aspects
of corporate America."
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Bloomberg
News
“Why
has investment banking, instead of soldiering in Iraq or drug
abuse, become the issue of the day for talented young American
novelists?
First,
this season's lists brought us Dana Vachon's wickedly self-assured
debut, “Mergers & Acquisitions.” Now David Bledin
gives us “Bank,” another first novel about a sharp
young graduate getting chewed up inside the machinery of a powerhouse
of modern capitalism.
The story? Our hero goes to work at a bank. And, guess what, he
hates it. He really, really hates it.
Bledin
spent a year working as a trainee analyst at an investment bank,
although he doesn't say which one. This is more than reticence:
Part of his argument is that Wall Street banks are all the same.
In
keeping with our times, this book began as an e-mail. Bledin wrote
a funny note called “A Day in the Life of an Investment
Banker,” which made the rounds among junior grunts toiling
at the coal face of the financial markets. The squib evolved into
a newspaper article on white-collar sweatshops. That, in turn,
prompted a call from a literary agent. This book is the result.
“Bank” is a far bleaker work of fiction than Vachon's
humorous “Mergers & Acquisitions.” Though Bledin
delivers plenty of laughs, they are mostly cruel ones.
Our
hero, Mumbles, spends his days (and nights, as he's rarely allowed
out of the office) as a human punching bag for a parade of dysfunctional
bosses, including The Sycophant, The Philanderer and the Crazy
Brit.
Unadulterated
Sex
His
allies in the trenches include The Defeated One and Postal Boy.
They are naturally suspicious of The Star and jealous of The Prodigal
Son, especially when he starts an affair with a woman banker known
only as Unadulterated Sex.
On
the whole, it's accurate enough. Bledin is good on the mind-numbing
tedium of the daily grind of financial analysis, coupled with
the brutal, unreasonable bullying of the bosses. Plenty of people
who've worked in banks will wince: Those of us who haven't will
worry less about the million-dollar bonuses we're missing.
Bledin's
greatest strength lies in the camaraderie that develops among
four recent graduates suddenly tossed into the brutality of office
life. They struggle to find their feet and to make sense of what's
happening around them. They are terrified, yet combative, calling
themselves “cubicle warriors” and plotting revenge
on everyone. “We should be wearing capes for this,”
Mumbles mutters.
Money
Trap
It's
all tuned to perfection. Yet the question remains: Why are clever
young graduates who have neither the taste nor the aptitude for
markets choosing to become bankers? There are two explanations,
both related to the fabulous amounts of money now being made on
Wall Street.
Just
15 or 20 years ago, graduates could chose from an array of careers
that would offer different yet roughly equal sets of rewards.
That has now changed. Bankers get paid so much these days that
it takes sheer will power to resist the business. Why not make
all that loot?
Yet many don't belong in banks and, not surprisingly, they detest
the work. One way of taking revenge is to write about it.
Novelists
have long lampooned the ways of Wall Street, of course. One thinks
of Tom Wolfe's “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” The
difference is that Bledin and Vachon are writing from the inside
out, not the outside in. They recognize all too well the power
that financial markets hold over their generation.
Which
brings us to the second reason why scribblers are becoming bankers,
however briefly. Writers like to home in on the most interesting,
disruptive things happening in the world. The argument underlying
these books is that the 21st century is being forged in the halls
of investment banks.
A
nasty world it might be. Yet it's colorful and dynamic. It's where
the future is being made. And people always want to write -- and
read -- about that.”
Author’s
comment: It’s rare to see a review that analyzes the context
of a piece of writing, rather than just the content. A personal
story: After interviewing at the Bank, I received a call from
the head of HR who said, “Dave, everybody really likes you,
we think you’re going to do good work and be lecherous enough
at the strip clubs, but we’re not so sure you’re a
good fit for the industry.” It was the post-9-11 financial
Armageddon, and I was in mortal fear of graduating college and
ending up in a cardboard box on the sidewalk within the month,
so I retorted with some hackneyed explanation for why I was the
next Star-in-the-making. I must make a good pathological liar,
because I got the job. Nonetheless, I was a terrible investment
for the Bank. I quit after a year, and since most analysts fumble
around without accomplishing much their first few months on the
job, I left without maximizing my true potential as a spreadsheet-laden
donkey. The point of the story is that the head of HR was right:
I wasn’t a “good fit” for banking, as are countless
others.
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DealBook
(New York Times financial blog)
“Bankers
can be forgiven for being very careful about what they say around
the office. Acid-laced books, both fictional and nonfictional,
written by former employees of investment banks, seem to have
replaced drug-strewn memoirs as the current era’s “it”
genre.
Even
the fictional books, like Dana Vachon’s “Mergers &
Acquisitions,” borrow heavily from real life. And the nonfiction
ones, such as William D. Cohan’s “The Last Tycoons:
The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.,” which
came in at a respectable No. 353 on Amazon’s sales ranking
as of early Tuesday afternoon, have even more potential for causing
trouble. (Lazard seems to consider “Tycoons” to be
quasi-fiction; a firm spokeswoman told The Times in March that
it is “substantially inaccurate, was not fact-checked with
the firm and has nothing to do with the present state of Lazard
or its business.”)
Now
comes “Bank,” a novel by David Bledin, who worked
for a year as a trainee at an unnamed investment bank. It is,
Matthew Lynn declares in his review for Bloomberg News, “a
far bleaker work of fiction” than “Mergers & Acquisitions,”
and while it is funny, like “Mergers,” the laughs
“are mostly cruel ones.”
The
protagonist, named Mumbles, “spends his days (and nights,
as he’s rarely allowed out of the office) as a human punching
bag for a parade of dysfunctional bosses, including The Sycophant,
The Philanderer and the CrazyBrit,” Mr. Lynn recounts.
The
reviewer’s assessment:
On
the whole, it’s accurate enough. Bledin is good on the mind-numbing
tedium of the daily grind of financial analysis, coupled with
the brutal, unreasonable bullying of the bosses. Plenty of people
who’ve worked in banks will wince: Those of us who haven’t
will worry less about the million-dollar bonuses we’re missing.
Bledin’s
greatest strength lies in the camaraderie that develops among
four recent graduates suddenly tossed into the brutality of office
life. They struggle to find their feet and to make sense of what’s
happening around them. They are terrified, yet combative, calling
themselves “cubicle warriors'’ and plotting revenge
on everyone. “We should be wearing capes for this,'’
Mumbles mutters.
So
why are so many young people nevertheless attracted to the profession?
Simple, Mr. Lynn writes: Money. But “many don’t belong
in banks, and not surprisingly, they detest the work.”
Whether
the recent flurry of angst-laden books will stem the flow into
Wall Street remains to be seen.”
Author’s
comment: It’s not really a review, I concede, but it’s
the NewYorkholymotherofgodsendthisouttoeverythirdcousinTimes (albeit
in blog form), so I had to include it here.
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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 table of cubicle
rancor and awkard romances is well-paced, humorous and endearing.”
Author’s
comment: Overall, a pretty decent review. If the “sometimes
successful” had just been plain “successful,”
then it would have been a great review. Never believe authors
who say they never read their own reviews; we psychoanalyze each
and every word of them. Also, I didn’t realize that working
for a year as an investment banker makes me a “veteran of
the finance sector,” but I’ll take the reviewer’s
word for it.
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Kirkus Reviews
“A
sweet and satiric romantic fable about an overworked, overstressed,
overpaid investment banker who disovers that the life he leads
is no life at all. In his debut, former investment banker and
economic consultant Bledin, writing what he knows, captures the
workplace dynamic from the inside. His first-person narrator is
known by all simply as Mumbles, an unassuming Everyman who is
often confused with another employee by those above him in the
office hierarchy. Pretty much everyone else in the novel also
goes by a nickname - the Defeated One, the Star, the Sycophant,
the Philanderer, the Prodigal Son - in recognition of the fact
that they are perceived less as unique individuals than as replaceable
cogs in the investment-banking machine. The 90 hours per week
that Mumbles works - and he’s considered a slacker by his
superiors - costs him his relationship, such as it is, with the
Tenuous Girlfriend, but it helps him make a coffee-break connection
with the Woman With The Scarf. Both of them do drudge work for
ridiculous salaries - he stands to make over $100,000 as a 23-year-old
of little distinction, and is disappointed when his first annual
bonus barely tops $20k - but their mutual frustrations provide
a common denominator for a possible romance. Mumbles has promised
himself that he’ll leave for a job where he feels less stress
and more appreciation within two years, but when the Woman With
The Scarf starts applying to grad schools, he realizes that he
may have to make a potentially life-changing decision. How much
abuse can one man stand for how much money? There’s no real
plot and the characters are mainly caricatures, but Bledin has
an engaging tone that results in an appealing narrator, one who
sees his life in terms of popular culture (Groundhog Day,
The Graduate, Office Space) and doesn’t take himself
any more seriously."
Author’s
comment: Another decent review. It also has its slight buzz-kills
(“there’s no real plot and the characters are mainly
caricatures”) but it’s the first time anything I’ve
done has been called “sweet” since I was in diapers
and had goo dripping down my face. My main reason for
using nicknames was to protect myself against any possible litigation
(as some of my characters, as nasty as they are, are flesh and
blood people, real Voldemorts of the corporate world), but I like
the reviewer’s so-called explanation for it (“they
are perceived less as unique individuals than as replaceable cogs”)
even though it wasn’t my intention.
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Pajiba.com
"David Bledin’s
debut, Bank: A Novel, on the other hand, doesn’t
aspire to be great literary fiction, but it is an infinitely enjoyable
read that sticks to the suddenly popular workplace-hell subgenre,
and does it incredibly well. Comparisons to the The Devil
Wears Prada are inevitable and not entirely unfair, as Bank
focuses on the narrator, Mumbles, a first-year investment banking
analyst who endures hellish 120-hour weeks crunching numbers and
fiddling with Excel spreadsheets under the supervision of first,
The Sycophant, and later, The Crazy Brit, the novel’s slave-driving
Miranda Priestley character. Among the cast of characters are
his co-workers, Postal Boy (a pasty, eye-twitching high-strung
analyst who is always on the brink of losing it and creating “The
Columbine of the banking world”), the Defeated One (Mumbles’
coke-snorting cynical best friend at the bank), and the Woman
with the Scarf, the novel’s lawyer/love interest and target
of romantic awkwardness.
The novel explores familiar
territory for anyone who has read Adam Davies’ The Frog
King — trips to Starbucks, cubicle rage, girlfriend
neglect, co-worker adultery, office shenanigans, and emails accidentally
sent to the wrong person — but it is, at times, hilarious,
and at others, surprisingly endearing. Indeed, Bledin (a former
investment banker) manages to do the unthinkable here by humanizing
the plight of a number cruncher who spends 18 hours a day in front
of spreadsheets, and does so while creating a healthy amount of
suspense around something as seemingly mundane as the size of
a bonus. But the novel’s main focus is whether Mumbles will
be fired, resign, or have a nervous breakdown first and, unlike
The Devil Wears Prada, Bledin offers, at least, a more
realistic conclusion.
It’s not a particularly
ground-breaking novel, nor is it as good as Joshua Ferris’
recently released workplace-related Then We Came to the End,
but Bank is an immensely entertaining book propelled
by Bledin’s sharp wit, clever sense of humor, and affection
for his characters."
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NightsandWeekends.com
"This entertaining
novel from first-time author David Bledin tells the story of a
fresh-faced young man, Mumbles, in his first year as an entry-level
investment banker. Mumbles and the other members of the Gang of
Four—the Defeated One, Postal Boy, and Clyde—are all
over-worked, under-sexed, and running on caffeine-charged lattes
from the Starbucks in the lobby. The Gang is trying to master
the complexities of Excel spreadsheets while somehow hanging on
to the shreds of their personal lives and maintaining contact
with the outside world.
This isn’t the first
book to take on the modern office environment, but it’s
got great pacing, and the characters are on a definite path to
somewhere. That’s a neat trick to pull off for a first book—and
even more impressive considering that none of the characters (except
Clyde) have a real name assigned to them. It’s a great way
to save words, too, because when Bledin first mentions The Utterly
Incompetent Assistant, the reader knows exactly what she looks
like and how she’s going to act. The same is true of Prodigal
Son and his mistress, Unadulterated Sex.
Bank is almost the book
version of Office Space. The Gang of Four hate their
jobs, and even as they kill themselves to get ahead, they’re
trying desperately to get out. The jokes are both subtle and over-the-top.
It’s a book that will force you to laugh at the tactics
used to survive life in a business that expects 100-hour weeks
out of its lowest employees.
Bledin has a good ear for
how men talk in an office and a solid eye for how they act around
each other. That helps to make up for the fact that the book sort
of plays out in the way that the reader expects it to. There are
flaws in the plot, but the quality of the writing helps to overcome
them.
If you’ve ever had
a job that felt like it was sucking the life out of you, then
you’ll get the point of this book. There’s nothing
ground-breaking here—and, by the same token, you aren’t
going to learn any dirty little secrets about the world of investment
banking. But Bank is definitely worth the fifteen-dollar
investment."
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HipsterBookClub.com
"There has been a
recent surge in the popularity of the workplace novel. This year
alone has brought Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End,
the paperback edition of Max Barry's Company, and all
those "faction"/bildungsroman/ roman à clef novels
(Little Pink Slips, Mergers & Acquisitions,
Falling Out of Fashion, Because She Can). Perhaps
readers enjoy seeing people suffer more than they, or maybe they
yearn for a job where they could afford several dolce de leche
lattes a day. No doubt the hit TV shows The Office and The Apprentice
have contributed to our desire for literature that extols the
virtues of the everyday.
The problem for David Bledin's first novel, Bank, is one of logistics—with
all these other books coming out at the same time, what is he
adding to the mix? Working in Bledin's favor is that his book
is not a thinly veiled exposé of a famous celebrity. Bank
offers more for the reader interested in story and character,
as opposed to idle gossip.
Mumbles, the protagonist
in Bank has one hell of an awful job—he is a young investment
analyst. Down the road, he may be able to coast a bit, but for
now, his life consists of late nights and weekends working with
Excel and PowerPoint, fueled by terror and fancy coffees. The
plot itself is rather obvious: After suffering indignities at
the hands of his superiors and losing the girl, Mumbles is tired
of wasting his youth in a white-collar sweatshop, and rebels against
the tyranny of the Bank. Along the way, there will be both high
jinks and shenanigans. One or two characters will fail, loves
will be won and lost and won again. What saves Bank is Bledin's
comedic timing and attention to detail, making this an enjoyable,
fast-paced, and fun read.
Bledin uses clever shorthand,
like referencing Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist when Mumbles's
father suggests he consider leaving his job, using the book's
idea of obtaining inner peace when following one's desires. He
also references Stockholm Syndrome to describe why it's impossible
ever to leave the Bank, but then he gets a little bogged down
explaining the shorthand, making it overly long. Bledin also gives
all his characters descriptive sobriquets—The Sycophant,
The Star, The Prodigal Son, Unadulterated Sex, The Utterly Incompetent
Assistant—which serve to key readers in to which particular
pigeonhole these characters fit.
Despite having to pull
frequent all-nighters and working weekends, he and his pals (a.k.a.
The Gang of Four) have time to go out for lunch and Starbucks
breaks, where much of their shenanigan-plotting takes place. In
one plot, Mumbles proclaims he'll propose on the spot to any woman
who can finish a lunch order of General Tso's chicken at the gang's
favorite lunch spot; they hold him to it, thus introducing Mumbles's
love interest, The Woman with the Scarf.
The flaws are minor. Bledin
sweeps the reader up deftly, allowing us to join the Gang of Four
in their outrageous acts of skullduggery on their way to (we hope)
their inevitable epiphanies. Sure, some of the tomfoolery is closer
to the Tom Green movie Road Trip than anything Jim did
to Dwight in The Office, but Bledin's fast-paced, funny
style allow readers to gloss over the predictability and stereotypical
situations, and root the characters on as they struggle with their
lives at the Bank"
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ReaderViews.com
"“Bank,”
David Bledin’s tongue-in-cheek first novel, takes a look
at the world of investment banking through the eyes of young college
graduates desperate to receive an offer from an investment banking
firm. So desperate that they will work long hours and neglect
their own lives, so desperate that they put up with detestable
bosses that offer them no respect. David Bledin offers a look
into the life of Mumbles, Clyde, Postal Boy and the Defeated One.
Mumbles is the narrator
in this novel. He’s a good guy but he’s overworked.
Clyde is beyond caring about anything. “He doesn’t
give a damn.” Postal Boy has a nervous twitch in his eye
and is expected to go postal at any moment -- “The Columbine
of the banking world.” The Defeated One has a drug problem
and a girlfriend with a drug problem. He will work any amount
of hours to support his habit. These characters are attempting
to achieve their goal of a permanent position in the banking industry.
They must learn to deal with #REF, evil bosses, and deleting the
wrong sheets.
Their method of coping
is to play pranks on their bosses. One of their pranks is against
the Prodigal Son. The Defeated One saw him having sex with Unadulterated
Sex. The plan is to tape the two having sex at the office and
then to broadcast it for all to see at a company party.
“Bank” by David
Bledin is a humorous look at the world of investment banking.
The characters act or react in a sophomoric manner. But demon
bosses that demand long hours drive them to their actions. The
scene where Mumbles is in a meeting with a client and he’s
desperate to go to the bathroom is exceptionally funny. We’ve
all been in a similar situation at one time or another.  The
cover of this book is a hand with the middle finder sticking up.
It speaks to what the reader will find inside. However, many will
look at the cover and pass this book up missing the funny tale
that awaits them. David Bledin is an extremely talented author.
This is a book that will appeal to young adults."
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