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A whip-smart and funny novel told by a former Wall Street insider who reveals what it's like for a working woman to balance love, ambition, and family in a world of glamorous excess, outrageous risk-taking, and jaw-dropping sexism.
In 2008, Isabelle - a self-made, thirty-something Wall Street star - appears to have it all: an Upper West Side apartment, three healthy children, a handsome husband, and a high-powered job. But her reality is something else. Her trading desk work environment resembles a 1980s frat party, her husband feels employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare and homecare still falls in Belle's already full lap.
Enter Henry, the former college fiancé she never quite got over; now a hedge fund mogul. He becomes her largest client, and Belle gets to see the life she might have had with him. While Henry campaigns to win Belle back, the sexually harassed women in her office take action to improve their working conditions, and recruit a wary Belle into a secret "glass ceiling club" whose goal is to mellow the cowboy banking culture and get equal pay for their work. All along, Belle can sense the financial markets heading toward their soon-to-be historic crash and that something has to give - and when it does, everything is going to change: her marriage, her career, her world, and her need to keep her colleagues' hands to themselves.
From Maureen Sherry, a prize winning writer, a former Managing Director on Wall Street (who never signed a nondisclosure agreement when she left), Opening Belle takes readers into the adrenaline-fueled chaos of a Wall Street trading desk, the lavish parties, the lunch-time rendezvous, and ultimately into the heart of a woman who finds it easier to cook up millions at work than dinner at home.
"Starred Review. Corporate sexism and the mortgage crisis are a laugh a minute...in this delightful comic novel, at least...So much fun, and educational too." - Kirkus
"This workplace novel that takes a fun look at Wall Street and the Park Avenue set is filled with humor and heart." - Library Journal
"Working Girl meets Wolf of Wall Street in this in-depth, behind-the-pinstripe peek inside a temple of elite finance, navigated by a sharp, smart woman in an old boys' world." - Jill Kargman, author and creator of Odd Mom Out
"Wow. This is the inside story we've been waiting for...Shocking and hilarious, Opening Belle is one woman's glorious revenge on the unreconstructed Tarzans of the corporate jungle. I don't know how she does it, but I'm really glad she did." - Allison Pearson, author of I Don't Know How She Does It
"Opening Belle is an irresistibly Zeitgeist-y novel about motherhood, marriage, misogyny, lust, ambition, discovery, disappointment, entitled nannies, and Goldfish crackers on the floor that (and this is big) rings true." - Wednesday Martin, author of Primates of Park Avenue)
This information about Opening Belle was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
After twelve years on Wall Street, Maureen Sherry - formerly, the youngest Managing Director at Bear Stearns and a Cornell graduate - switched gears to earn her Masters of Fine Arts at Columbia University, to write, and to tutor at inner city schools. Walls Within Walls - her first book, a mystery for middle school audiences - has been awarded curriculum prizes by the states of Texas and Connecticut, and she was named one of the Best New Voices by the American Library Association. Maureen is also an active board member of numerous charities. But Maureen believes her biggest project is raising her four children with her husband which never feels like a job at all.
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