Bank » (Bargain)

David Bledin has cubicle-hopped in both investment banking and economic consulting. BANK is his first novel.

Every July, a fresh crop of college graduates clad in spiffy new suits fills the offices of investment banking firms, each newly minted analyst longing for big money while sacrificing anything that resembles a normal life.


In this enormously entertaining first novel, a lovable, stressed-out guy nicknamed Mumbles tells the story of how he and his cohorts not only struggle to survive corporate purgatory, but also find satisfying ways to strike back at the system. Fueled by a constant flow of Starbucks coffee, Mumbles and his friends take on such tasks as secretly filming a despised colleague's boardroom romp with an assistant, creating footage they plan to broadcast at the company's holiday party. But true gratification comes only when they actually start standing up to the bank's evil minions, those who have no qualms about piling on a weekend's worth of work on a Friday afternoon.


With sharp comedy, episodes of inspired hijinks, and its glimpse into a world of fleeting elevator romances and not-so-infrequent nervous breakdowns, BANK is a touching and lively novel that is, at its heart, about figuring out what really matters in life.

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 tale of cubicle rancor and awkward romances is well-paced, humorous and endearing. (May 1)