BOOK REVIEW: 'Bond Girl,' The Wall Street Kind

There's certainly more at stake here for the chick-lit story, "Bond Girl: A Novel," because our heroine, Alex Garrett, manages to get a job on Wall Street just in time for the financial apocalypse.

But before that, she's just another girl who has to face fierce competition to land an incredibly sought-after job: an analyst at Cromwell Pierce, one of the Street's best firms. After she aces an interview, she endures what some might describe as sexual harassment; her chair has the word "Girlie" on the back, some of her coworkers casually make remarks that some might (rightly) consider misogynistic. One of the first things a few of them do is ask whether they'd "do her," and advise her not to get fat, as "nobody here wants to be stuck looking at a pretty girl with a fat ass."

And then there's the shenanigans at work, a few of which are: running errands for the more senior employees (which is everyone), one of her coworkers taking on a $28,000 bet that he can eat the contents of the vending machine in one day and Alex's boss punishing her by making her spend $1,000 on a wheel of cheese.

No matter which side of the political spectrum you're on, you'll find plenty of fodder for your arguments here. Conservatives will point to the long hours of work and sweat that the people on Wall Street put in, the skill that they need to handle the amount of money and the clients that go with them and how Alex is actually given respect once she proves herself capable of lasting. Liberals will point out the insanely huge amounts of money they make doing a job that is barely defined, the hours they sometimes spend doing nothing, the mind-boggling amounts of money they waste on frivolities and the privileges they enjoy.

I kept thinking about how this novel has the potential to be something much greater. Written by Erin Duffy, a woman who worked on Wall Street for over ten years until she was fired, many of the moments feel genuine and real. The men she works with give her a hard time, yet they also eventually give her respect and help once they realize she's there to stay. She doesn't hide their faults, but she also makes them sympathetic. The smaller details, such as keeping the room cold so the computers won't overheat, make the environment seem all the more genuine.

However, due to the current economic climate, any book about this industry is going to be political, whether you want it to be or not. For all its positive attributes, I couldn't help but wish that Duffy had more of a journalistic instinct. But while she doesn't try to add any other type of insight into the meltdown, you do get the feeling that you are seeing the economic meltdown from someone who was in the actual trenches and had to watch her friends stop coming to work.

Again, the book seeks to humanize the workers of Wall Street, not politicize them. But, I can't help but feel that it's crippled by certain tropes of the chick lit genre (a lot of time is devoted to the love interest). If she had managed to write a more autobiographical novel, I felt that I could've had a lot more sympathy and understanding of finance workers.

Still, for what it was, it was an enjoyable read, and Alex is an enjoyable, feisty, capable, hardworking heroine worth rooting for as she navigates her way through the boys' club. Check it out for some fun, slightly smarter light reading.