Opening Belle
Maureen Sherry, 2016
Simon & Schuster
352 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781501110627
Summary
Getting rich on Wall Street would be a lot more fun if the men would keep their hands off her assets.
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 fiance 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. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1963-64
• Raised—Rockland County, New York, USA
• Education—B.A., Cornell University; M.F.A., Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York City, New York
Life is surely ironic for Maureen Sherry. Her father was an Irish immigrant, who worked in his younger days as a porter in the same Fifth Avenue apartment building where her eventual boss from Bear Stearns once lived. Years later, Maureen became the youngest managing director at Bear Stearns. Her 2016 novel, Opening Belle, is an semi-autobiographical, even farcical, take on her years spent in the world of finance.
Maureen grew up in Rockland County, New York State's southernmost county on the West side of the Hudson River. She earned her Bachelor's degree at Cornell University and spent 12 years on Wall Street. In 2000, however, she left, switching gears to earn her M.F.A. at Columbia University. She spent her time raising her four children, writing, and tutoring at inner city schools.
Her first book, Walls Within Walls (2010)—a mystery for middle schoolers—was 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. She has also written for the New York Times Op-Ed page. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
Ms. Sherry’s novel is a breezy comedy in the style of Bridget Jones’s Diary.... Like her heroine, Ms. Sherry worked on the Bear Stearns trading floor, then a notoriously rowdy place. She said she took the frat-boy antics in stride.
Alessandra Stanley - New York Times
Funny, relevant and often shocking.... Even if your own life is far from a fairy tale, Opening Belle will allow you to laugh, learn and maybe even lean in—to hug your own family a little closer.
Washington Post
Maureen Sherry’s comic novel unspools like a movie.... several [scenes] seem written for Hollywood, possibly for fun, but they read like they’re more for profit. Not that there’s anything wrong with a woman making a living, of course.
Dallas Morning News
[C]haracters' choices are framed as bold, empowering, and optimistic decisions—opportunities for women to excel professionally and make a unique mark on their industries while thriving in work environments that they build themselves. Yet for the reader, they can also feel otherwise, provoking emotions of both sadness and anger; it’s a shame that these industries are so inhospitable to women that their best, and ultimately, only choice is to leave. In the end, though these characters "succeed," they really didn’t have much of a choice at all.
Atlantic Monthly
Compulsively readable…a cheeky—and at times, romantic—battle-cry for any woman who’s ever strived to have it all and been told by a man that she couldn’t.
Entertainment Weekly
This workplace novel that takes a fun look at Wall Street and the Park Avenue set is filled with humor and heart.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [A] laugh a minute...in this delightful comic novel, at least.... While she's making you laugh, Sherry does an excellent job of explaining what exactly happened in the financial crisis and gives a rare picture of the wide range of ways women in the workplace deal with chauvinism, some as heroes, some as victims, and some as opportunists
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
(We'll add specific questions if and when they're made available by the publisher. In the meantime use our talking points to help start a discussion for Belle Opening...then take off on your own):
1. Describe the world of a Wall Street financial firm: the boys club vs. the glass ceiling club. Consider both the chauvinism and greed. Are you surprised...amused...disturbed by the environment Maureen Sherry portrays?
2. When one of her male colleagues has his hand down her skirt, Belle thinks, "I’m disgusted at myself for not walking away, for putting up with this stuff just to talk business." Why doesn't she walk away?
3. Maureen Sherry said, in an interview with New York Times reporter Alessandra Stanley, that she wanted to write about the mortgage crisis in an engaging way that ordinary readers would understand. Do you think she succeeded?
4. Have you read other books on the 2008 financial crash...or have you seen the films Margin Call (2011) with Kevin Spacy or The Big Short (2015, based on Michael Lewis's book) with Steve Carell? If so, how does Opening Belle compare? If not, consider reading The Big Short or watching either or both films.
5. Describe the relationship Belle has with her husband Bruce. What attracted her to him originally, and how has he changed? Also, talk about the rarified life-style Belle and Bruce live, including (or especially) the children's preschool.
6. The end of the novel—did you see it coming?
7. Now that you've read Opening Belle, what do you think of Wall Street? Suspicions confirmed? Or better than you expected?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)