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A review by lisa_mc
Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett
2.0
Adam Haslett is nothing if not prescient. Inspired to write a novel after reading a book about the Federal Reserve 10 years ago, he finished “Union Atlantic” the week that Lehman Brothers collapsed.
His novel centers on a large — dare we say “too big to fail”? — investment bank, Union Atlantic, unbound from some regulations and barely legally skirting others, led into ruin by the greed-driven, high-risk dealings of a couple of rogue employees. The Fed is forced to deal with the teetering bank through hushed-up, closed-door deals to prevent a domino effect.
Meanwhile, one of the awful greedy bankers (he has no redeeming qualities at all) has torn up a forest to build a big, gaudy house; his old-timer neighbor sues over it; a high-school boy the neighbor is tutoring gets involved sexually with the banker; and the neighbor's brother, who happens to be chief of the NY Fed, has to deal with the bank fallout and his sister's possible dementia. And the banker's boss's son is friends with the high school boy, and they all live in the same little town. It's all quite cozy -- a little too coincidental.
The novel is well written and complex banking transactions are explained in a mostly straightforward way, with enough detail to make them comprehensible but not so much that the story bogs down.
However, good writing isn’t enough to overcome two major flaws with “Union Atlantic.”
One is that the main characters aren't likable -- the banker is soulless, the neighbor speaks in screeds, and I couldn't quite figure out what the boy was doing in all of this except serving as a way for the banker to spy on the neighbor.
The other is that the story is not all that gripping. Unlike many novels with plots that strain the imagination, this one is too believable: We’ve just lived through these events. As such, it’s hard to muster outrage for fictional greedy bankers who bring down venerable institutions and get off scot-free when we’ve already spent a lot of outrage on the real ones. Maybe it's just too soon.
His novel centers on a large — dare we say “too big to fail”? — investment bank, Union Atlantic, unbound from some regulations and barely legally skirting others, led into ruin by the greed-driven, high-risk dealings of a couple of rogue employees. The Fed is forced to deal with the teetering bank through hushed-up, closed-door deals to prevent a domino effect.
Meanwhile, one of the awful greedy bankers (he has no redeeming qualities at all) has torn up a forest to build a big, gaudy house; his old-timer neighbor sues over it; a high-school boy the neighbor is tutoring gets involved sexually with the banker; and the neighbor's brother, who happens to be chief of the NY Fed, has to deal with the bank fallout and his sister's possible dementia. And the banker's boss's son is friends with the high school boy, and they all live in the same little town. It's all quite cozy -- a little too coincidental.
The novel is well written and complex banking transactions are explained in a mostly straightforward way, with enough detail to make them comprehensible but not so much that the story bogs down.
However, good writing isn’t enough to overcome two major flaws with “Union Atlantic.”
One is that the main characters aren't likable -- the banker is soulless, the neighbor speaks in screeds, and I couldn't quite figure out what the boy was doing in all of this except serving as a way for the banker to spy on the neighbor.
The other is that the story is not all that gripping. Unlike many novels with plots that strain the imagination, this one is too believable: We’ve just lived through these events. As such, it’s hard to muster outrage for fictional greedy bankers who bring down venerable institutions and get off scot-free when we’ve already spent a lot of outrage on the real ones. Maybe it's just too soon.