Book Review: A Tale of Terror in the World Financial Markets
“Economics is where medicine was in the Middle Ages, only our prescriptions are even more painful. Country’s in crisis? Well then, tighten policies, raise interest rates, slash budgets, and while we’re at it, bring out the leeches and bleed the patient as well.”
This isn’t a pronouncement about the current debt crisis, but a running commentary from one of the characters that people Rex Ghosh’s first novel Nineteenth Street NW . Fast-paced with compelling characters, it draws you in and take you for an engrossing ride, that’s all the more relevant, given the current crises in Europe and the U.S..
We meet Sophia Gemaye on a flight out of Dulles to London, agonizing about the explosives contained in her laptop and chatting up a small girl about her favorite ballet. Unlike the terrorist in John Updike’s novel Terroris Immediately thereafter, we meet Celine O’Rourke, a low-level economist at the IMFO, an IMF-like institution. Both naïve and knowing, she’s as comfortable manipulating world markets as she is uncomfortable in personal relationships. Just as we see the terrorist handler through Gamaye’s eyes, we’re privy to the internal diplomatic machinations of the IMFO through O’Rourke’s. The novel goes back and forth between both characters, giving them equal weight. In having relatively junior people advance the plot, Ghosh lets the reader learn about the workings of the terror cell and the IMFO in a novelistic real time. These two worlds remain separate until Gamaye starts a hedge fund with the goal of bringing down whole currencies. At this point, the lives of the women become intertwined in explosive ways. With characters far more interesting than most thrillers, Nineteenth Street NW is a thinking person’s beach read. You won’t come out of this novel speaking like Alan Greenspan, but you’re more likely to take a reasonable stab at dissecting the oracular pronouncements for which he was known. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, IMF economist Rex Ghosh is doing for the econ novel what Abraham Verghese did for the medical novel. In creating the IMFO, one suspects he could easily be writing about the IMF. His insider take on inflated egos and diplomatic jargon makes spending a few brain cells on purchasing power parity and fundamental equilibrium exchange rates (FEER) palatable, and even enjoying, for the non-econ reader. You won’t come out of this novel speaking like Alan Greenspan, but you’re more likely to take a reasonable stab at dissecting the oracular pronouncements for which he was known.
John Updike Novels - News
Unlike the terrorist in John Updike's novel Terrorist, we like this girl. With her western education, sense of style and relentless curiosity about her handler Melamed, we almost forget her primary motivation lies in achieving some vision of justice
More than two years after the death of Berks County native John Updike, family and friends gathered Friday at the cemetery's four-generation Hoyer/Kramer/Updike plot at Robeson Evangelical Lutheran Church, Plowville, where the four Updike children had
At the New Yorker from 1936 to 1976, he worked with a stable of writers that included John Updike, JD Salinger, John Hersey, Vladimir Nabokov and John Cheever. Born in Lincoln, Ill., in 1908, Maxwell wrote short stories and novels,
of his first two books, 'Mr. Peanut' and 'Ladies and Gentlemen.' (Special) To be mentioned with some of the world's literary giants is certainly something that younger authors welcome. But don't think that comparisons to John Cheever, John Updike,
John Updike, in the Rabbit books, knew that Rabbit's inner life was as rich and riveting as, well, as John Updike's. Mick Little, in Raisin's hands, never rises far above passive suffering, expressed in brief banalities. It makes him a frustrating
The Quivering Pen: Soup and Salad: John Updike rests in peace ...
John Updike's family holds a memorial service two years after his death . From the local newspaper: Those who came to honor the prolific Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer, praised for his literary "Rabbit" series and the chronicling of late 20th century American life in many novels, short stories, essays and poems, read from his works and witnessed the marking of his Pennsylvania resting place with a New England-style slate memorial. Carved by his younger son, Michael J. Updike, 52, Newbury, Mass., the black marker is highlighted at its top with a wry, smiling facial portrait of Updike with attached angel's wings, as if the author's soul is transcending to heaven, his spirit living on. At the marker's bottom are carvings of a scythe, representing the divine harvest, an hourglass for the shortness of life and a skeleton for the fragility of life, according to Michael...."I started the memorial last year, but it took awhile because I did it at my leisure," son Michael said. "You could say working on it was therapeutic, but we (the family) also felt Pennsylvania needed some special recognition of him." By now you've probably heard some independent bookstores are charging patrons to attend author appearances (" Come Meet the Author, but Open Your Wallet "). The Millions helps put it in perspective in this article : "...if open access to readings diminishes, will readers grow more familiar with an author’s brand than with the real person behind a text? Considering that packaging and promotion are just as much part and parcel with being writer as creating content, why shouldn’t an author’s public appearances be monetized? Writers have increasingly become products in and of themselves while getting paid less and less for their literary artifacts." It was midday on a Monday in early August of the year 2000. The Nasdaq, rested from its breather in the spring, was sprinting back up over 4,000 toward its March peak. Vice President Gore , demolishing the Bush son’s early lead, was pulling even in the polls. TV commercials depicted placid investors being wheeled on gurneys into operating rooms, stern-faced doctors diagnosing their patients with dire cases of money coming out the wazoo.
John Updike Novels - Bookshelf
Rabbit, run
Terrorist
Ahmad, threatened by the hedonistic society around him, gets involved in a plot, with reverberations that rouse the Department of Homeland Security.Rabbit at rest
In the final novel about ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the hero has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild while ...The Maples stories
Collected together for the first time in hardcover, these eighteen classic stories from across John Updike’s career form a luminous chronicle of the life and ...In the Beauty of the Lilies
A critically acclaimed novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer traces one family's profound journey over four generations and across the spiritual landscape ...Perfect Information Directory
John Updike - Wikipedia
Hyperlinked profile of the prolific novelist, short story writer, and poet.
John Updike: Biography from Answers.com
John Updike , Writer Born: 18 March 1932 Birthplace: Reading, Pennsylvania Died: 27 January 2009 (lung cancer) Best Known As: The author of Rabbit,
John Updike: Quotes, Early Life and Early Career, Career ...
Discover John Updike; Quotes, Early Life and Early Career, Career, Novels, and Stories, Marriages and Family, Poetry, Literary Criticism and Art Criticism, Critical ...
The Witches of Eastwick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Widows of Eastwick, John Updike's sequel to The Witches of Eastwick, was ... those who praised the novel as a departure from John Updike's previous novels. ...
Amazon.com: The Witches of Eastwick (9780449912102): John ...
Amazon.com: The Witches of Eastwick (9780449912102): John Updike: Books ... And it makes sense for Updike to have set the novel in the era of the Women's Movement of ...
