MORAL HAZARD - Softcover

Jennings

3.64

321 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841157384 ISBN 13: 9781841157382

Publisher: Fourth Estate, 2003

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The acclaimed second novel from Kate Jennings, author of ‘Snake’.

On Wall Street, reflects Cath, women are about as welcome as fleas in a sleeping bag. She finds herself working there because she needs serious money: after ten good years, her beloved older husband Bailey is gravely ill. So begins her journey into two nightmare worlds.

‘Powerful, and darkly, disconcertingly comic.’ Margaret Walters, Sunday Times

‘Blackly funny, coruscatingly clear-eyed and intelligent, Kate Jennings’ second novel doesn’t waste a word.’ Maureen Duffy, author of Restitution

‘A unique book by an extraordinary writer: The great city illuminated from within.’ Shirley Hazzard, author of ‘The Transit of Venus’

‘A small pearl of a novel...as gripping as any thriller.’ Newsday

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Review:

Kate Jennings' first novel, Snake, was praised for combining "dry comedy" and "genuine heartbreak"; now she has used the same sweet and sour recipe in her second book Moral Hazard--but with even more raw ingredients. The heroine is thirtysomething Cath, a smiling, punning, do-gooding bien pensant who has somehow ended up in the vicious purlieus of Wall Street, dealing billions with the great white sharks of high finance. This unfeasibly high-powered employ contrasts sharply with Cath's homelife. She's married to a man 25 years her senior: "sweet Bailey, dearest Bailey... optimistic where I was pessimistic, enthusiastic where I was distrustful". This marriage is not perfect: as Cath mordantly observes "marriage is awful in its nearness. Yoked together, bound, in a three-legged race with no finishing line." Nevertheless Cath and Bailey, in their May/December way, have found a modus vivendi, a kind of happiness. Then, horribly, Bailey is diagnosed with Alzheimer's...

Three chapters in we learn this terrible truth, and the rest of the book concerns Cath's desperate, affecting, sardonic, resolute ways and means of dealing with Bailey's rollercoaster ride to the inevitable--or even worse. It's not an easy journey; this is not the easiest of books. What largely rescues the whole from being a whiny or self-pitying lament is the prose: humorous, energetic, sharp, urbane and vivid. Rather like the September 11, 2001 Manhattan Jennings describes so well.--Sean Thomas

Review:

‘Her observation is acute. She mercilessly mocks “plutocrats deeply suspicious of metaphors and words of more than two syllables”.’ Helen Brown, Daily Telegraph

‘Whip-smart, knowing and wry.’ People Magazine

‘A remarkable achievement. Jennings brings to her novels an understanding of how to distil narrative down to its essences. She is an observer, exploring the world with objectivity, humour and refreshing irony.’ Margaret Stead, Times Literary Supplement

‘Unsparing and unsentimental, Jennings conveys extraordinary characters with a wry, knowing intelligence. A perfect example of less is more, “Moral Hazard” is both touching and funny without ever being slushy.’ Big Issue

‘Compelling reading. Cath’s thorny humour adapts itself well to both terminal illness and terminal greed.’ New York Observer

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