By: Maureen Sherry
ASIN: B01A7FZVUG
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 2/2/2016
Format: Audio
My Rating: 5 Stars
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 fiancé 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.
Review to follow!
Advance Praise
"Corporate sexism and the mortgage crisis are a laugh a minute...in this delightful comic novel, at least....So much fun, and educational too." (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)
“A smart, biting and honest peek into what it means to be a woman on Wall Street. I loved this book.”
--Reese Witherspoon
"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
“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
"Working Girl meets Wolf of Wall Street in this in-depth, behind-the-pinstripe peek inside a temple of elite finance, navigated by a sharp, smart woman in an old boys' world." --Jill Kargman, author and creator of Odd Mom Out
"Wow. This is the inside story we've been waiting for. Wall Street women never talk because their silence has been bought. Not Maureen Sherry. She tells her story of a working mother's battle against outrageous sexism and financial recklessness with laugh-out-loud insight and winning panache. Shocking and hilarious, Opening Belle is one woman's glorious revenge on the unreconstructed Tarzans of the corporate jungle. I don't know how she does it, but I'm really glad she did." --Allison Pearson, author of I Don't Know How She Does It
"Opening Belle is an irresistibly Zeitgeist-y novel about motherhood, marriage, misogyny, lust, ambition, discovery, disappointment, entitled nannies, and Goldfish crackers on the floor that (and this is big) rings true. But that’s not all. Sherry’s novel is also a delightfully funny and frequently damning participant-observer’s dissection of the secretive codes and practices of an elite, socially antediluvian tribe of men who, in a very real sense, run the world. For them, the bell has sounded." --Wednesday Martin, author of Primates of Park Avenue
"Rooting for our girl banker/mommy/wife Isabelle is not tough; she is so brilliantly breezy. This book reveals the honest reality of a woman working in a man's world and still being treated like she's in an updated version of the cult classic 9 - 5."
--Lucy Sykes, author of The Knockoff
“Maureen Sherry reveals what it’s like to be a woman working in the adrenaline-fueled, complex, exciting, rewarding, and demanding culture of Wall Street. You won't be bored on this roller coaster ride.” --Amy Goodfriend, CEO Goodfriend Partners, former Partner, Goldman Sachs
"This funny and fast-paced romp is sure to entertain." (Booklist)
"This workplace novel that takes a fun look at Wall Street and the Park Avenue set is filled with humor and heart." --Library Journal
Reese Witherspoon Developing Wall Street Comedy
‘Opening Belle’ Read More
About the Author
After twelve years on Wall Street, Maureen Sherry—formerly, the youngest Managing Director at Bear Stearns and a Cornell graduate—switched gears to earn her Masters of Fine Arts at Columbia University, to write, and to tutor at inner city schools. Walls Within Walls—her first book, a mystery for middle school audiences—has been 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. Maureen is also an active board member of numerous charities. But Maureen believes her biggest project is raising her four children with her husband which never feels like a job at all. Read More
