Starfishing
A Novel
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
LONDON, LATE 1990s. Frankie Cavanagh has just started working as a trader and is determined to beat the men she works with at their own game. The dizzying surge of adrenaline that comes with the chaos, the speed, the rush of the day, is only amplified when she begins an affair with her charismatic American boss. Powered by clubs, cocktails, and cocaine, their thrill-seeking relationship quickly spirals out of control, bringing Frankie to a point of reckoning.
This electrifying novel from the “awe-inspiring” (Birmingham Post, UK), award-winning author of The Killing Jar lays bare the landscape of London’s trading room floor—its fierce customs, furious pace, and insatiable greed. Nicola Monaghan depicts the high-stakes reality of the burgeoning global economy in the 1990s and reinvents the classic tale of ambition and power with a gritty, fearless heroine. Crackling with energy and intensity, Monaghan’s powerful and seductive prose plunges readers into a whirlpool of hubris and betrayal, capturing the fragile nature of morality and confirming her reputation as an exhilarating young talent.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her abysmal second novel, Monaghan (The Killing Jar) delves into the manic, drug-fueled world of late 1990s English finance. Ambitious Frankie Cavanagh gets a job as a floor trader at the London futures and options exchange. Under the lead of her boss, Tom Phillips, an attractive and cocky American, she maneuvers the male-dominated world, slowly earning the trust and respect of some of the men while alienating others. A sexual attraction to Tom evolves into an affair driven by booze, cocaine, Ecstasy, and daring games of chicken that rush headlong toward disaster. While the descriptions of the human mania of the trading floor in its last throes before electronic trading took over are revealing, the tension in this novel flags around Frankie and Tom's relationship and Frankie's dithering about her life. Flabby sentences, flirtations with clich , and a ridiculous conclusion will leave readers somewhere between puzzled and disappointed.
