Moral Hazard: A Novel - Hardcover

Jennings, Kate

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007141084 ISBN 13: 9780007141081

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2002

Synopsis

A liberal young woman finds herself working for arrogant, greedy men on Wall Street while her beloved husband begins to suffer from the early onset of Alzheimer's Disease. A first novel.

About this title

Review:

Kate Jennings's first novel, Snake, was praised for combining "dry comedy" and "genuine heartbreak"; now she has used the same sweet-and-sour recipe in her second book, Moral Hazard--but with even more raw ingredients. The heroine is thirtysomething Cath, a smiling, punning, do-gooding bien pensant who has somehow ended up in the vicious purlieus of Wall Street, dealing billions with the great white sharks of high finance. This unfeasibly high-powered employ contrasts sharply with Cath's home life. She's married to a man 25 years her senior: "sweet Bailey, dearest Bailey... optimistic where I was pessimistic, enthusiastic where I was distrustful." This marriage is not perfect: as Cath mordantly observes, "marriage is awful in its nearness. Yoked together, bound, in a three-legged race with no finishing line." Nevertheless Cath and Bailey, in their May/December way, have found a kind of happiness. Then, horribly, Bailey is diagnosed with Alzheimer's....

Three chapters in we learn this terrible truth, and the rest of the book concerns Cath's desperate, affecting, sardonic, resolute ways and means of dealing with Bailey's rollercoaster ride to the inevitable--or even worse. It's not an easy journey; this is not the easiest of books. What largely rescues the whole from being a whiny or self-pitying lament is the prose: humorous, energetic, sharp, urbane, and vivid. --Sean Thomas, Amazon.co.uk

About the Author:

Kate Jennings, who grew up in rural Australia, has lived in New York City since 1979.She is the author of the internationally acclaimed novel Snake, as well as a number of volumes of poetry, essays, and stories. During the nineties she worked as an executive speech writer at several Wall Street investment banks.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fourth Estate
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0007141084
• ISBN 13: 9780007141081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192