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Title: Bombardiers by Po Bronson ISBN: 0-14-025450-1 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.58 (38 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Ingenious...
Comment: I read this author's second book The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest first. I really enjoyed that novel as it involves characters I can relate to in an industry I'm in (high tech start-ups). Naturally, I was a little apprehensive about reading this novel as it centers on Wall Street and bond trading. I'm not a business person, but this is my reaction after reading the book:
A lot of the banking concepts such as bonds, savings and loans, securities I didn't fully understand. But kudos to the author for structuring his prose in such a way that the specifics of bond trading is not important in moving the plot forward. It's the characters and their personal ideosyncracies and relationships with one another that grip the reader. The pace of the novel can only be described as frenetic, like a movie that incessantly cuts away to scene after scene every couple of minutes. To have an author that is able to provide the reader with a 360-degree panoramic view into the heart and life of an industry while at the same time satirizing it is pure genius.
As a quick summary of the story: Sidney Geeder is the king of mortgages. He's the best bond salesman Atlantic Pacific (AP) has. He's also a couple of months away from retiring rich with stock options. Sid's hatred for the bonds he sells is what drives him to be the best. At the same time a new kid named Mark Igino (aka Eggs Igino) joins the company. Egg's is a natural salesman and also somewhat of a renegade for not having been exposed to the house rules of AP. As expected, Eggs turns the place upside down. Sid and Eggs quickly form a friendship (more like an alliance). Naturally, AP wants to control its employees, and how it does it is the focus of this story along with a supporting cast that'll keep you grinning till the end. Truly engaging!
The author has an uncanny talent for humor in the subtleties of each character. A statement as absurd as "he lost his job because of his need to floss" generates complete empathy on the part of the reader after reading through this novel. I would recommend this book to any person with any background.
LEAP rating (each out of 5):
============================
L (Language) - 4 (well-crafted dialogue keeps your mind off the technicalities of bond trading)
E (Erotica) - 1 (let's just say, bond salesman have fun too)
A (Action) - 0 (n/a)
P (Plot) - 3 (fairly predictable ending, it's the characters that are important)
Rating: 4
Summary: Manic and Hilarious, I laughed myself into tears
Comment: "Bombardiers" is manic and funny.
Po Bronson's novel about bond traders is a candid look into the "greasemen" of the financial system. It tells the story of a dysfunctional SF bond trading office. The office is a corporate meatgrinder churning out profits, making those crazy or tough enough to handle the stress rich, and crushing the rest. In the pressure cooker of the bond market, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro". If you're not a pro, you're fired. One day, a new salesman Eggs Igino fresh out of grad school arrives. He's like Jesus, and he changes everything.
This book was so good, I read it in two days. At one point I had to put it down because I was laughing so hard tears were running down my cheeks. Bronson's prose is this weird melange of Joseph Heller and Hunter S. Thompson (in his early years). It's the ridiculous, mixed with base human emotions, and salted with the bizarre.
While hilarious, Bronson's plot is a bit weak. He appears to be an author who derives more from the setting then the story. I had trouble sorting out the main character's (Igino) motives. Or maybe the main character was Sid Geeder? I couldn't be sure. In addition, his two female character's (Lisa Lisa and Sue Marino) were interchangeable.
"Bombardiers" is a good read. It's got information, sex, absurdity, and cruel humor administered at an amphetamine charged pace. You won't put it down.
Rating: 1
Summary: Fragmented and uneven
Comment: Sid Geeder is a "bombardier", an investment banker who spends every waking moment working for the Atlantic Pacific Corporation. When he's not working, he's thinking about work. Stressed beyond his limits, the only thing that keeps him going is knowing that he only has nine months before he can cash in his stock options, and retire at the age of thirty-four.
But Sid isn't the only trader with problems. Eggs Igino is the newcomer to the team, and he worships Sid as a mentor. As he tries to get the hang of life on the trading floor, Eggs finds he may be in over his head. Gorgeous Lisa Lisa may be a good trader in her own right, but she constantly encounters difficulties as she tries to make it in a man's world while hoping to find true love. And when Coyote Jack suddenly becomes unable to pronounce a single number without stuttering, he finds himself managing this team of money-hungry, dysfunctional employees.
BOMBARDIERS moves at lightning speed, but despite the fast pace of the novel, the story falls flat. Perhaps it's because the characters don't seem real enough. They don't evolve, change, or grow over the course of the novel. Or perhaps the fault lies in the overuse of investment jargon and the utter focus on the life of a day-trader, all of which loses steam after the first hundred pages.
Po Bronson drew on his own experience as a day trader to write this book, and it shows. His knowledge of the business is unquestionable, but BOMBARDIERS would have been a much more engaging book had he limited the number of essays on bond sales, and focused more on plot and characterization. Sudden and frequent point of view changes also left me dazed, and I often had to backtrack and re-read entire paragraphs to figure out what was happening.
A fragmented, uneven look at the world of investment banking, BOMBARDIERS falls short of an intriguing read.
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Title: The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest: A Novel by Po Bronson ISBN: 0380816245 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 30 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Nudist on the Late Shift : And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley by Po Bronson ISBN: 0767906039 Publisher: Broadway Pub. Date: 02 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: What Should I Do with My Life? by PO BRONSON ISBN: 0375507493 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 24 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street by Michael Lewis ISBN: 0140143459 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1990 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Monkey Business : Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle by John Rolfe, Peter Troob ISBN: 0446676950 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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