Bond Girl

The title Bond Girl (#174) instantly evoked images of Bond, James Bond (the Sean Connery Bond, of course!) in me and my friends, but that could be because we're all that "certain age".  The reality is quite the opposite.  This novel by Erin Duffy is based on her very first job out of college on Wall Street.   As she assured the audience at Bookmania! this January, many of the anecdotes recounted are true.

Alex Garrett is first smitten by the excitement of Wall Street when her father, an investment banker, brings his nine year old daughter to work.  She decides at that moment that this is where she wants to work, and as a senior at University of Virginia, Alex describes the on-campus interview process with the firm she has chosen as her target: Cromwell Pierce.  She is hired as an analyst, and after the briefest of orientations, she is assigned to the Government Bonds desk; hence, the title.  To make it in this super competetive world is difficult at best; to be a women trying to make it ratchets up the pressure to the power of nth degree.  And Alex begins her career when times are good for the financial field!  As the market collapses, so do Alex's prospects, and her job just isn't as much fun as it used to be. 

Although Alex makes some good friends at Cromwell, it is still slightly horrifying to read about the hazings newcomers must endure, the constant cut-throat competition and total focus on money above all other considerations.  It's definitely not a life I would ever choose, but it is fun to live it vicariously through Ms. Duffy's breezy account.  Hard to imagine that people on Wall Street lived this way not so long ago, and that many of them still are enjoying that lifestyle.  And so would Alex be, if she hadn't come to a moral fork in the road.  Think of Bond Girl doing for Wall Street what The Devil Wears Prada did for the fashion publishing industry and you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect.  A fun weekend read.