Rich and Shameless
The Australian
Joseph Borghino
4/16/2005
A passionate love affair with money is at the heart of Stephen Amidon's new novel: getting it, keeping it and ultimately, tragically, losing it, writes Jose Borghino
Human Capital
By Stephen Amidon, Viking,375pp,$29.95
WE like to watch rich people. We like to hear about their foibles, their successes and (especially) their downfalls. A large chunk of our daily news diet is made up of such fodder. Stephen Amidon's novel Human Capital is on a winner, then, in featuring a cast of Americans who are rich (they might say comfortable) or wannabe rich. Human Capital is set in modern-day Connecticut, the cute, leafy state with the funny name nestled between New York and Massachusetts that, in terms of per capita income, is the wealthiest region in the wealthiest nation.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose The Great Gatsby defined what it was to be rich and excessive for a previous generation, once wrote, ``Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.'' To which Ernest Hemingway -- poet laureate of the bleeding
obvious -- famously replied, ``Yes, they have more money.'' And it's money that makes the world go around in Human Capital. The central characters of the novel are enmeshed in the unpredictable rhythms of global capital, either because they work the money markets or because they depend on those who do. There's Quint Manning, the ice-cool broker whose mysterious hedge fund, WMV, has been making spectacular profits. There's his wife, Carrie, who's bored and looking for something to spend Quint's money on. There's Drew Hagel, a real-estate agent who's losing his business and hopes to find a quick fix by investing all his money in WMV. And there's Drew's teenage daughter, Shannon, disillusioned with her father's world and escaping g into the arms of a troubled local boy named Ian who will inherit a large sum of money when he turns 18.
You get the picture. There is wealth everywhere in this little corner of Connecticut. But there wouldn't be any drama if everyone's dream came true. Sure enough, a slight hiccup in the markets sends WMV's earnings into a nosedive and the scene is set for a cascade of domestic tragedies.
Then, about halfway through, Amidon throws in a hit-and-run accident and suddenly the book flips into thriller mode. Will the perpetrators of the accident be exposed? Will the wrong person be condemned? Who will be ruined and who will be saved?
All this could have been tedious -- a cross between Law & Order and Days of Our Lives without the blessed relief of ad breaks. But Amidon is a better writer than that. He manages to leaven the plot's inexorable march towards tragedy with several surprises that hold interest to the end.
And his prose is consistently deft and controlled -- happy to get expository when the plot needs to rattle along a bit but always able to stand back and observe the goings-on in verdant Connecticut with a generous irony.
Amidon displays some clever writerly techniques to keep readers on their toes. For instance, chapter by chapter, the novel's narrative point of view shifts between the same four characters -- a quasi-filmic technique that allows us to see the same scene from different perspectives and shows people's paths constantly intersecting. To further complicate the narrative flow, Amidon includes flashbacks to fill in the back-stories.
In the end, we know almost too much about each character and their motivations; the outcome seems preordained, a modern version of a fatalistic Greek tragedy or a medieval wheel of fortune.
This is Amidon's sixth book but his previous career as a journalist shows in the clarity of his prose and his ability to provide the right detail at the right time to define a character or moment. Sometimes that detail is a technical phrase.
For instance, apparently there are people who specialise in totting up a human being's dollar value. No, this has nothing to do with slavery, prostitution or the illegal trade in body parts. These people work in the very straight, very licit world of insurance and they calculate someone's ``potential'' or ``human capital'' as a way of determining compensation payouts. This snippet of information comes near the end of Human Capital and it crystallises, in one powerful, disturbing image, the absurdity at the core of the lives of most of the book's characters.
That we are fascinated by the lives of the wealthy is undeniable -- much of our politics and popular culture is based on the assumption that we all aspire to some version of the ``rich and famous''script, no matter how absurd. I suppose it's better than the pathos of being poor. As the old vaudeville hoofer Sophie Tucker oncesaid, ``I've been rich and I've been poor; rich is better.''
Copyright 2005 / The Weekend Australian
The Australian
Joseph Borghino
4/16/2005
A passionate love affair with money is at the heart of Stephen Amidon's new novel: getting it, keeping it and ultimately, tragically, losing it, writes Jose Borghino
Human Capital
By Stephen Amidon, Viking,375pp,$29.95
WE like to watch rich people. We like to hear about their foibles, their successes and (especially) their downfalls. A large chunk of our daily news diet is made up of such fodder. Stephen Amidon's novel Human Capital is on a winner, then, in featuring a cast of Americans who are rich (they might say comfortable) or wannabe rich. Human Capital is set in modern-day Connecticut, the cute, leafy state with the funny name nestled between New York and Massachusetts that, in terms of per capita income, is the wealthiest region in the wealthiest nation.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose The Great Gatsby defined what it was to be rich and excessive for a previous generation, once wrote, ``Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.'' To which Ernest Hemingway -- poet laureate of the bleeding
obvious -- famously replied, ``Yes, they have more money.'' And it's money that makes the world go around in Human Capital. The central characters of the novel are enmeshed in the unpredictable rhythms of global capital, either because they work the money markets or because they depend on those who do. There's Quint Manning, the ice-cool broker whose mysterious hedge fund, WMV, has been making spectacular profits. There's his wife, Carrie, who's bored and looking for something to spend Quint's money on. There's Drew Hagel, a real-estate agent who's losing his business and hopes to find a quick fix by investing all his money in WMV. And there's Drew's teenage daughter, Shannon, disillusioned with her father's world and escaping g into the arms of a troubled local boy named Ian who will inherit a large sum of money when he turns 18.
You get the picture. There is wealth everywhere in this little corner of Connecticut. But there wouldn't be any drama if everyone's dream came true. Sure enough, a slight hiccup in the markets sends WMV's earnings into a nosedive and the scene is set for a cascade of domestic tragedies.
Then, about halfway through, Amidon throws in a hit-and-run accident and suddenly the book flips into thriller mode. Will the perpetrators of the accident be exposed? Will the wrong person be condemned? Who will be ruined and who will be saved?
All this could have been tedious -- a cross between Law & Order and Days of Our Lives without the blessed relief of ad breaks. But Amidon is a better writer than that. He manages to leaven the plot's inexorable march towards tragedy with several surprises that hold interest to the end.
And his prose is consistently deft and controlled -- happy to get expository when the plot needs to rattle along a bit but always able to stand back and observe the goings-on in verdant Connecticut with a generous irony.
Amidon displays some clever writerly techniques to keep readers on their toes. For instance, chapter by chapter, the novel's narrative point of view shifts between the same four characters -- a quasi-filmic technique that allows us to see the same scene from different perspectives and shows people's paths constantly intersecting. To further complicate the narrative flow, Amidon includes flashbacks to fill in the back-stories.
In the end, we know almost too much about each character and their motivations; the outcome seems preordained, a modern version of a fatalistic Greek tragedy or a medieval wheel of fortune.
This is Amidon's sixth book but his previous career as a journalist shows in the clarity of his prose and his ability to provide the right detail at the right time to define a character or moment. Sometimes that detail is a technical phrase.
For instance, apparently there are people who specialise in totting up a human being's dollar value. No, this has nothing to do with slavery, prostitution or the illegal trade in body parts. These people work in the very straight, very licit world of insurance and they calculate someone's ``potential'' or ``human capital'' as a way of determining compensation payouts. This snippet of information comes near the end of Human Capital and it crystallises, in one powerful, disturbing image, the absurdity at the core of the lives of most of the book's characters.
That we are fascinated by the lives of the wealthy is undeniable -- much of our politics and popular culture is based on the assumption that we all aspire to some version of the ``rich and famous''script, no matter how absurd. I suppose it's better than the pathos of being poor. As the old vaudeville hoofer Sophie Tucker oncesaid, ``I've been rich and I've been poor; rich is better.''
Copyright 2005 / The Weekend Australian