“They’ve got business in a hundred countries. Counterparties up and down the food chain. They’re ten percent of the municipal bond market. They’ve got more credit cards than Chase. And they’re overweighted in mortgage securities. They’re the definition of systemic risk. And we’re barely out of a recession. It’d be malpractice to let them fail.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (FEB 9, 2010)

After reading Union Atlantic, one fact becomes increasingly obvious: Adam Haslett is one heck of a talented writer. But what might not be that obvious is that he is also prescient. His gripping novel essentially revolves around a large fictional bank (Union Atlantic)’s spectacular failure. Get this: Haslett completed it the week that a real-life bank, Lehman Brothers, collapsed.

Haslett has said that while writing Union Atlantic, he worried that no one would know what the Federal Reserve was, or “if they did they wouldn’t want to read about it in a novel.” He needn’t have worried. After all, life—in this case sadly—imitates art.

Doug Fanning, a young and aggressive banker is one of the higher-ups in Union Atlantic, a bank in Boston. A child of a single, alcoholic mother, who worked as a cleaning lady to support her son, Fanning leaves home abruptly one day to join the navy. After a brief but life-defining stint in the Middle East, Fanning leaves the navy and makes a meteoric rise to the upper ranks of Union Atlantic. Even early on, he is never shy of wearing his ruthless ambition on his sleeve, a quality that wins him a spot as a special favorite of the bank’s CEO, Jack Holland.

Interestingly Fanning’s ambition (and his emotional vulnerability) even shows up in his decision to build a mansion in Finden, a posh suburb in Western Massachusetts. His mother once drove to the same town to clean rich people’s homes here. He builds a gorgeous, state-of-the-art mansion on a beautiful patch of land. There is one problem however. His neighbor, Charlotte Graves, claims the land was sold to him illegally and that it belongs to her grandfather’s trust. She is determined to have her day in court and have the eyesore removed from the land she is so deeply attached to.

Once a history teacher in the local high school, Charlotte now spends her days with her two dogs, lamenting the slow decline of the American character and the country’s spirit. “The house was merely the furthest and most galling advance of the much larger intrusion, the one that had begun decades ago, first at a distance, a sighting here or there, a fancy stroller in the library stacks, a concern for caloric totals voiced over the meat counter,” she thinks. A staunch liberal, Charlotte abhors the kind of greed and avarice Doug seems to personify.

Also in town is Nate, a teen drifter trying to finish school. He signs up for tutoring lessons with Charlotte and instead listens to her rant endlessly about the America that she knows is lost. In Nate, Charlotte sees her lover Eric, who died very young from a drug overdose. Over the course of many weeks, Nate also gets to know Doug and develops a crush on him.

Back at work, Doug’s shenanigans with reckless money bets slowly begin to take a toll on Union Atlantic to the point where it comes to the attention of the head of the New York Federal Reserve, Henry Graves. Henry, as it turns out, is Charlotte’s brother. As the fiscal crisis grows, he increasingly plays a role in trying to tie all the knots together and keep the system afloat.

Haslett has said that he has been fascinated by the idea of the anonymous power that the Fed exercised and wanted to write about it. Union Atlantic tells the story of the bank’s collapse briskly and well. The factual details for the deals and exchanges get a little confusing at times, but it’s not a problem. You begin to realize that the finer details don’t matter as much as the fact that crimes are being committed here. Haslett keeps the pace moving trying to explain the details of the financial malfeasance as best as he can.

Haslett does an excellent job narrating the story from each character’s point of view. Small details are taken care of. For example, when Charlotte fills a pewter tankard with water and hands it to Nate, he says to himself the vessel looked like “something a knight might drink from.” Only a teen would think that.

The one weak link in the novel is Nate. As great as his character is, I didn’t quite get what purpose his narrative served. If it was to show Doug’s emotional complexities, as he gets increasingly involved in a precarious relationship, it serves its purpose. But often, Nate feels like a prop in the story, not fully there—only serving to augment one narrative of another character’s personality.

All in all though, Union Atlantic is one great read. Haslett has said that he hopes readers will not look at Doug as simply a stand-in for the avarice of the age. They probably won’t. But the entire novel, with its portrayal of small-town politics, corporate greed and the sad decline of American liberalism definitely feels like an accurate snapshot of our times.

Perhaps the novel’s biggest achievement is that it is so enjoyable despite the protagonist being such an unlikeable figure. Writing powerful stories where the reader can easily sympathize with the central character is what most fiction is made of. But it requires real talent to craft an absorbing story when the protagonist is so hard to like. When Doug once resents being judged, he says he could see that people “in their bootless, liberal refinement would judge him and all he’d done as the enemy of the good and the just.” But, he argues, these same people’s “high-minded opinions” were “just decoration for a different pattern of consumption.” You totally see his point.

It is to Haslett’s enormous credit that by the end of Union Atlantic, one can at least see what Doug Fanning’s motives are and feel badly for the smothering solitude he endures. Yes, one can argue that much of it is his own doing but you almost begin to like the guy. Almost. And that is an achievement that alone makes Union Atlantic such a fantastic and engrossing read.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 45 readers
PUBLISHER:	Nan A. Talese; 1 edition (February 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Adam Haslett
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: You Are Not A Stranger Here Another prescient novel about money: Human Capital by Steve Amidon

Bibliography:

• You Are Not A Stranger Here (August 2002)
• Union Atlantic (February 2010)

“Noises echoed down the hall, a din of scrapes and thuds and voices; the sound of his house hemorrhaging around him. He felt cold and helpless but also somehow relieved, as if the worst were finally beginning.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody (FEB 8, 2010)

Model Home by Eric Puchner is a novel that takes place during an eighteen-month period between 1985 and 1986 in the Los Angeles area. It is the story of a family that is trying very hard not to fall apart at the seams. Warren, the dad, is a realtor who has invested all of his family’s savings in a housing development that sits far out in the desert right next to a toxic dump site. His investment has gone belly-up. At first, when his car is repossessed, he tells his family that it was stolen. When the creditors come for his living room furniture, he tells his family that he is tired of leasing furniture and that he has ordered much nicer stuff that will arrive next month. Naturally, Warren is acting strangely. His wife, Camille, who works on developing videos for school sex education programs, thinks that Warren is having an affair. When the truth of their bankruptcy comes out, Camille is relieved that Warren’s strangeness is not due to an affair, and for a brief time Warren and Camille find themselves content with one another.

There are three children in the family. Dustin, the oldest, is a good looking teenager with a beautiful girlfriend, who likes to surf and is planning on going to UCLA next year. Gradually, he starts to fall for Taz, his girlfriend’s Goth sister who has scabs on her ears from picking at them and has pulled her own fingernails out. Lyle is the middle child, a girl who feels different and left out of the mainstream. She lives in L.A. and desperately wants a tan but all she can do is burn. She designs t-shirts with monograms like “Death to Sandwiches”or “Like a Sturgeon.” She begins having an affair with Hector, the Mexican security guard at their housing complex. Jonas, 11 years old, is the youngest. He is obsessed with death and is focusing specifically on the murder of a “retarded” girl in their neighborhood. On some days Jonas likes to dress all in orange, including his socks.

The family has been living in a plush housing development way beyond their means. Warren had thought he’d strike it rich with his real estate scheme and that nothing was too good for them. They soon have to leave their cush domain and move into one of Warren’s model homes in the desert – in that very same complex next to the toxic dump site. Naturally, they are the only family living there as no other homes have been sold. Camille now has a three hour round-trip commute for her job and Lyle is living with a friend because it is too far to commute to school. There is no money left to send Dustin to college since they’re broke so he keeps himself busy with his garage band. Jonas is like the lost child.

As the children are growing up, they are pulling away from their parents. Everyone in this novel is wanting to be something more, something better, or something different than who they are. Their ambitions often lead to tragic outcomes. This family has more than one “before” and “after” to face. As they face catastrophes, the reader watches as the thin fiber that has been holding this family together unravels. Despite the unraveling, the novel asks poignant questions about the nature of family and love. Can family members love one another despite the most severe pain, anger, and resentment. Are they still whole once they are damaged? What is the source of love and strength that inspires families to hold on?

Part of the plot deals with a character who gets severely burned. The author speaks with great knowledge about burn units, burn treatment and burn victims. The descriptions are graphic and remind me of scenes in The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. Puchner manages to conjure up the smells, agony, and sounds of a burn unit and the reader is pulled along into this traumatic event.

The writing in this book can be uneven. Sometimes it is so beautiful that it can take your breath away, especially towards the end. However, there are times when it tries to be too clever for its own good. Phrases and sentences seem to be slipped in just because they sound good. Overall, it is a rewarding novel to read. The author ties all his ends together and there are no red herrings among the characters. I appreciate that in a novel. Every character is developed and has his or her place. Each character is unique with their own set of idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. Puchner is a writer to watch and I look forward to new publications from him.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 1 readers
PUBLISHER:	Scribner (February 9, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AMAZON PAGE:	Model Home
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Eric Puchner
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Other books about the families & stressful times: The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter The Unnamed by Josh Ferris

Bibliography:

• Music Through the Floor: Stories (2005)
• Model Home (February 2010)