Union Atlantic

"He’s an American writer and this is his first novel. This is as close as we get to a financial crash novel. There have been a few attempts but I don’t think we’ve got the great novel of the financial crash yet. This is very good, though. It tells the story of Doug, who had an alcoholic mother and an impoverished childhood, and he joins the navy to get away from all that. There’s a fantastic opening sequence in which he and his comrades have just shot down a passenger jet – by mistake. He then leaves this military life behind and enters finance where he becomes this cold hard-headed operator who’s out to find a way to beat the market. We certainly find out a lot about how to bend the rules just enough to win, how the financial markets work, but again, most novels are about the same thing in the end. It’s about how you look at your past, how you create your identity. It’s an old-fashioned novel about class really. He goes and builds this giant house not far from where he grew up and it’s partly about who he can be now. Only quite late in the novel does he visit his formerly alcoholic mother. It’s such an ambitious subject to take on. There are times where I think the main character is perhaps a bit too hard-headed and we can’t quite believe him, but it’s a really good read."