Opening Belle

Opening Belle, A Novel, by Maureen Sherry,  Simon & Schuster 2016

Not far from the truth, in fact barely disguised as a novel, Sherry's first book shows us an entirely new - female -  view of Wall St banking and trading scenes - all of which have that awful "don't tell me we're still not past it" shock.  From the frat boy end of year celebration in which our main character -  married with one child, an Upper West Side co-op, a stay-at-home formerly rich husband, and later, a rental in the Hamptons, private school tuition for four - count them, four - children --- feels the warmth of a hand slipping down the back of her skirt, to the odd hiring and promotion practices of her firm exposed.  

Maybe it really is always all about the money.  Why else would Sherry's Opening Belle find such a variety of off-putting, damaging kill-the-competition practices in a grown-up financial firm filled with well-educated high-performers?   You'll just know as you read her deadpan descriptions that these guys are real, and you'll learn a lot about what makes these financial giants and their deals tick:

Trading floor - "The trading floor, the place most of us work, sets the stage for a mating dance. ...  A grid of attached desks sits in a space a quarter the size of a football field.  There are no walls and no cubicles to separate us  During work hours, everyone is either on the phone or flirting.  A trading floor has everything to keep adrenal glands pumping cortisol:  breaking news, tragedy, money, racism, sexism, and a little less overt sex play than in the past..."

Women at work:  "They feel she reaffirms everything the old boy network thinks about women - that we improve the landscape on the trading floor, but that the real work, the mega-trades and deals, is to be handled by the men.  They see her as bait for clients, a tantalizing young thing to have at a client dinner, while the big boys discuss real things.  She can sip her wine and toss her long-ring curled hair from left to right while smiling at their jokes and arranging for the car service to bring them home."

Bonus day in money season:  "In just a few hours it'll be bonus day for the McElroys.  I'll be paid for the home runs of the year, the Emergent Biosolutions, the CeeV-TV.  Bonus day means that the graph I keep on  my computer, the one that represents the amount of money we need to live comfortably in some suburb, grows more black than red.  We are getting so close to moving somewhere easier..."

Making money before the crash, a la the movie The Big Short:  "Those tranches of subprime mortgages I put together for Henry sparked a deluge of orders from Cheetah.  I write orders for CMOs with a Cheetah account number on them several times per day.  Marcus, Amy and King all sit back in awe as I do less with the slow-moving stock market and more with this shiny new toy called subprime mortgage bonds."  

Who knows if there are lessons to learn from this book?  This particular species of anti-female bias has been going on for so many years, in so many guises, but now with higher stakes, it's not worth worrying about the feminist pseudo-revolutionary perspective toward corporate sexism.  Its still about the money.  And what happens on the trading floor, especially around the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, however, is a cautionary tale.  For a real life look into the depths of serious money-making, Opening Belle is a good start.