Moral Hazard
 Kate Jennings
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2002 Fourth Estate/HarperCollins
  ISBN: 0007154623


In the world of high finance women are about as welcome as fleas in a sleeping bag.

An innocent in the lion's den of a trading firm lodged in the upper reaches of the World Trade Center, Cath offers us a keen & delightful glimpse into that world we lost on 9/ll.

By knowing someone who knows someone else, Cath gets a position as an internal company speechwriter in a high-riding, risk-taking trading firm of Niedecker. There she observes the denizen on the brink of disaster, both awesome & grubby, all masters of the financial sleight of hand.

Given Cath's former lifestyle as a confirmed feminist & liberal, the reason she has taken such a strange occupation, lies in her marriage. Her much older, beloved Bailey, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, & its deterioration is progressing rapidly.

Caught between these two nightmare worlds, Cath grasps at whatever will keep her from falling apart. One of those things is her smoking companion, Mike, who works in another department of the firm. They meet out in the World Trade Plaza, & in Wall Street's little parks overlooking the river, & they talk. What Cath learns from these talks develops into the quandry that gives rise to the book's title.

Written with the intensity of the here & now memoir, Moral Hazard draws us along on the ebullient, lucid & often courageous voice of a thoroughly modern New York immigrant from Down Under.

Kate Jennings' lean & muscular language, replete with lusty asides, everyday connections & laced with high finance insights, takes us on a two year rollicking ride into Purgatory, where both her husband & her company lose all control of themselves & circumstances.

What a read! Moral Hazard is heartwrenching on one page, unabashedly learned about the shellgames of Wall Street on the next, & deftly sketching portraits of her co-workers on the next. Kate Jennings delves into the complex world of high finance with aplomb, as well as a wary eye. She plunges into the world of end-of-life caretaking, nursing homes & medicines with a jaundiced eye & the bravery & intentions of not knowing she cannot do it.

Very well done!

More from Kate Jennings: Snake a novel; Stories: Women Falling Down in the Street; Essays: Save Me, Joe Louis; Bad Manners; Poetry: Come to Me, My Melancholy Baby; Mother I'm Rooted(editor); Cats, Dogs & Pitchforks

Do catch my Interview with Kate Jennings -- her energy & feisty grasp of language is a joy!
(07/14/02)

Rebecca