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In this Pygmalion tale of a novelist turned bond trader, Martha McPhee brings to life the greed and riotous wealth of New York during the heady days of the second gilded age. India Palmer, living the cash-strapped existence of the writer, is visiting wealthy friends in Maine when a yellow biplane swoops down from the clear blue sky to bring a stranger into her life, one who will change everything.The stranger is Win Johns, a swaggering and intellectually bored trader of mortgage-backed securities. Charmed by India s intelligence, humor, and inquisitive nature and aware of her near-desperate financial situation Win poses a proposition: Give me eighteen months and I'll make you a world-class bond trader. Shedding her artist's life with surprising ease, India embarks on a raucous ride to the top of the income chain, leveraging herself with crumbling real estate, never once looking back ... Or does she?
With a light-handed irony that is by turns as measured as Claire Messud s and as biting as Tom Wolfe s, Martha McPhee tells the classic American story of people reinventing themselves, unaware of the price they must pay for their transformation.
"Starred Review. Martha McPhee's fourth novel wouldn't be so funny if it didn't ring so true ... the novel reflects just how much of an industry publishing is, and how success in financial speculation involves crafting a compelling narrative." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] few intriguing finance tidbits, but mostly this is a middling tweak of a familiar story, though a fitting one for these times of shattered money dreams." - Publishers Weekly
"The characters are lively, and the narrative is engaging and fun to read, although the bond trader 'talk' gets more technical and lengthy than necessary." - Library Journal
"Delivering virulent social satire with a velvet, humanitarian touch, McPhee’s timely send-up deftly parodies the fallout from misplaced priorities." - Booklist
This information about Dear Money 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.
The author of four previous novels and a finalist for the National Book Award, Martha McPhee lives in New York City with her children and husband, the poet and writer Mark Svenvold. A few years ago, when a legendary bond trader claimed he could transform her into a booming Wall Street success, she toyed with the notion - but wrote Dear Money.
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