What do you think?
Rate this book
The Insiders: A Portfolio of Stories from High Finance
In this remarkable debut collection, David Charters reveals the secretive world of international bankers, brokers, and business executives with an insider's acuity. Sharp suits, fast cars, lavish expense accounts, and exclusive clubs are the comforts of lives lived at a furious pace, where betrayal and blackmail are paths to success, extramarital sex is an equal opportunity job perk, and an initial public offering might be a matter of life or death.
An ambitious middle manager offers his wife to his new boss. An overheard conversation between two powerful executives leads to unexpected consequences for the eavesdropper. A cocky young investment banker is sent to Moscow on his first big opportunity---and finds more than he bargained for. A Ferrari-driving businesswoman plays a wicked prank after an anonymous sexual encounter. These and other characters are brought to life with a few deft brushstrokes, as each story veers through twists and turns to a surprising end.
David Charters is a keen-eyed observer and denizen of this world, and the stories of The Insiders are witty, suspenseful, entertaining---and too close to truth for comfort.
An ambitious middle manager offers his wife to his new boss. An overheard conversation between two powerful executives leads to unexpected consequences for the eavesdropper. A cocky young investment banker is sent to Moscow on his first big opportunity---and finds more than he bargained for. A Ferrari-driving businesswoman plays a wicked prank after an anonymous sexual encounter. These and other characters are brought to life with a few deft brushstrokes, as each story veers through twists and turns to a surprising end.
David Charters is a keen-eyed observer and denizen of this world, and the stories of The Insiders are witty, suspenseful, entertaining---and too close to truth for comfort.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2004
1 person is currently reading
6 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 29, 2019
Illuminating London's high finance environment and fauna in neat and loosely connected short stories with a tragicomic bent.
November 19, 2012
In his introduction, Charters writes: “Please do not feel sorry for the characters who come to grief. Like gamblers in a casino, they know the risks and make their own decisions – and they do not complain when they win” (p. 7). I took this to mean that bad things would probably be happening to at least a few likeable characters. As it turned out, bad things happened to many characters in these stories. They lost their jobs, went broke, were left by their wives, failed a job interview. One even committed suicide. For the most part, I barely felt a twinge for any of them.
While there were a few main characters who were likeable, or who at least weren't jerks within the small number of pages they were given in the book, they were outnumbered by the unlikeable main characters. Those characters were corporate sharks (or, in at least one instance, wannabe corporate sharks) who cheerfully plowed through their colleagues to get to the top. They were philanderers who saw the women around them as either beddable, useful around the office or home, or not worth having having around. Quite a few of them drank at work, or after work, or the night before a big business deal. In other, longer works they could potentially have been multifaceted, sympathetic characters, but in The Insiders they were just jerks. Most of them weren't even interesting jerks.
What kept me reading was not the characters, but rather the situations they found themselves in and my desire to know what twist Chambers would throw at readers next. It also didn't hurt that each story was short and easy to get through.
Quite a few of the stories dealt with business situations: deals that went well or badly, team-building exercises, scrambles to get or keep jobs, etc. A few stories delved into the personal lives of some of the characters – in one rather funny instance, a supposed business situation was revealed to be a bit of bedroom roleplaying (somehow, I don't see that relationship lasting very long). For the most part the characters in this book were heterosexual men, but a very small number of stories did bring up homosexuality and/or feature women as more prominent characters.
Overall, this was an okay book. The characters tended to blend together, but the twists I knew each story would end with kept me reading. Possibly because of the existence of real-life people like Bernie Madoff, it didn't really bother me that so many of the characters were liars and jerks, and I actually kind of appreciated that things often didn't work out well for them.
(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
While there were a few main characters who were likeable, or who at least weren't jerks within the small number of pages they were given in the book, they were outnumbered by the unlikeable main characters. Those characters were corporate sharks (or, in at least one instance, wannabe corporate sharks) who cheerfully plowed through their colleagues to get to the top. They were philanderers who saw the women around them as either beddable, useful around the office or home, or not worth having having around. Quite a few of them drank at work, or after work, or the night before a big business deal. In other, longer works they could potentially have been multifaceted, sympathetic characters, but in The Insiders they were just jerks. Most of them weren't even interesting jerks.
What kept me reading was not the characters, but rather the situations they found themselves in and my desire to know what twist Chambers would throw at readers next. It also didn't hurt that each story was short and easy to get through.
Quite a few of the stories dealt with business situations: deals that went well or badly, team-building exercises, scrambles to get or keep jobs, etc. A few stories delved into the personal lives of some of the characters – in one rather funny instance, a supposed business situation was revealed to be a bit of bedroom roleplaying (somehow, I don't see that relationship lasting very long). For the most part the characters in this book were heterosexual men, but a very small number of stories did bring up homosexuality and/or feature women as more prominent characters.
Overall, this was an okay book. The characters tended to blend together, but the twists I knew each story would end with kept me reading. Possibly because of the existence of real-life people like Bernie Madoff, it didn't really bother me that so many of the characters were liars and jerks, and I actually kind of appreciated that things often didn't work out well for them.
(Original review, with read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews