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Review
`What a great read this is. A masterpiece ... A modest, gentle work of genius ... A treat from start to triumphant finish' --Observer
`Urgently topical fiction with its finger on the pulse of earth-shaking events ... Cartwright's fiction has an uncanny habit of catching the zeitgeist in nets of fine-meshed tragic-comic steel ... the novel most fast, hits hard, and rings true' --Independent
`So astute it sizzles with knowing ... One of the most sophisticated exponents of the well-observed and artfully nuanced English comic novel. Few living British novelists write English fiction quite as well as Cartwright. The quality that sets him apart from most of his contemporaries is that, beneath the humour and the irony, he has a subtle awareness of the essential fragility of humans, however flawed' --Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
`Very exciting ... He gets right so many different aspects and facets of how we live now' --Ekow Eshun, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review
`Cartwright is as accomplished as anyone writing fiction today. He is a master'
--Scotsman
`Sharply observed, suavely written ... A triumphant accomplishment' --Sunday Times
`Composed with a superb eye and supremely well-written' --Daily Telegraph
`Original and familiar ... funny and wise' --Economist
`A subtle and pacy comedy of manners finds its humour and humanity in the shades of moral grey that define all its main characters'
--Daily Mail
`Urgently topical fiction with its finger on the pulse of earth-shaking events ... Cartwright's fiction has an uncanny habit of catching the zeitgeist in nets of fine-meshed tragic-comic steel ... the novel most fast, hits hard, and rings true' --Independent
`So astute it sizzles with knowing ... One of the most sophisticated exponents of the well-observed and artfully nuanced English comic novel. Few living British novelists write English fiction quite as well as Cartwright. The quality that sets him apart from most of his contemporaries is that, beneath the humour and the irony, he has a subtle awareness of the essential fragility of humans, however flawed' --Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
`Very exciting ... He gets right so many different aspects and facets of how we live now' --Ekow Eshun, BBC Radio 4 Saturday Review
`Cartwright is as accomplished as anyone writing fiction today. He is a master'
--Scotsman
`Sharply observed, suavely written ... A triumphant accomplishment' --Sunday Times
`Composed with a superb eye and supremely well-written' --Daily Telegraph
`Original and familiar ... funny and wise' --Economist
`A subtle and pacy comedy of manners finds its humour and humanity in the shades of moral grey that define all its main characters'
--Daily Mail
Review
'Other People's Money is wise, droll and beautiful fiction' David Mitchell 'His storytelling powers are so fluent and persuasive, the quality of his observation so fine' Daily Telegraph 'A high-class piece of literary entertainment' Spectator 'A delicately patterned novel about the heroic search for happiness and its ultimate fragility. The comfortable middle-class setting and faintly fairytale ending belie a portrait of family life in which concealment and compromise are never far away. Quietly moving' Financial Times
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 41 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I thoroughly enjoyed Justin Cartwright's "Other People's Money" even though it totters on the tight line between serious fiction and light comedy before collapsing decisively into the latter territory.
OPM recounts the last days of Tubal & Co, a merchant bank that has been a national institution since "Moses Tubal set himself up at the sign of the Leathern Bottle by Bread St in 1671." Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal (the family has moved beyond its Jewish roots) still cuts a fine figure but, sequestered with servants in his Antibes villa, he has lost his mind and is steadily shuffling of this mortal coil. Julian, his second son has been thrust reluctantly into the chair while Simon - "the hairy heir" pursues an alternative calling. Under Julian's leadership, Tubal strays from Sir Harry's banking basics and the "silken thread of connection" to customers to experiment with Gaussian risk curves, hedge funds and CDOs. The bank is in trouble and in order to plaster over the cracks to permit a quick sale to the very American Cy Mannheim, Julian resorts to a last ditch manipulation of the accounts involving misuse of the family trust. Naturally, all does not go smoothly.
Cartwright brings a gentle touch to his satire (though one character central to the subplot, the ex -husband of Sir Harry's younger wife, Fleur, is well over the top), and he writes delightfully. Thus, we learn that the life of the old rich is "patinated," their subtle luxury established by increments rather than in an interior decorator's fell swoop; Fleur observes that her dying husband's eyes are bloodshot and imagines that " his soul has been crying"; and the pilots of Julian's plane, which is on standby to take him anywhere at a few minutes notice, "are joking, chubby young men from the deep, rugby-playing suburbs."
Enjoyable though it is, "Other People's Money" is hardly the definitive novel about the recent financial crisis heralded by some of its professional reviews. The plot is light, the characters stock, and the analysis of the banking world wistful rather than penetrating. Even Julian's misdeed is more like a white lie than a high crime - virtually everyone from the prime minister to the bank's customers and most lowly employees are better off as a result of his victimless legerdemain. On the Richter scale of fiction, OPM ranks somewhere between Peter Mayles and the Sebastian Faulkes of "A Week in December." It is no less readable for that, but it is hardly the "The Way We Live Now" of our times.
OPM recounts the last days of Tubal & Co, a merchant bank that has been a national institution since "Moses Tubal set himself up at the sign of the Leathern Bottle by Bread St in 1671." Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal (the family has moved beyond its Jewish roots) still cuts a fine figure but, sequestered with servants in his Antibes villa, he has lost his mind and is steadily shuffling of this mortal coil. Julian, his second son has been thrust reluctantly into the chair while Simon - "the hairy heir" pursues an alternative calling. Under Julian's leadership, Tubal strays from Sir Harry's banking basics and the "silken thread of connection" to customers to experiment with Gaussian risk curves, hedge funds and CDOs. The bank is in trouble and in order to plaster over the cracks to permit a quick sale to the very American Cy Mannheim, Julian resorts to a last ditch manipulation of the accounts involving misuse of the family trust. Naturally, all does not go smoothly.
Cartwright brings a gentle touch to his satire (though one character central to the subplot, the ex -husband of Sir Harry's younger wife, Fleur, is well over the top), and he writes delightfully. Thus, we learn that the life of the old rich is "patinated," their subtle luxury established by increments rather than in an interior decorator's fell swoop; Fleur observes that her dying husband's eyes are bloodshot and imagines that " his soul has been crying"; and the pilots of Julian's plane, which is on standby to take him anywhere at a few minutes notice, "are joking, chubby young men from the deep, rugby-playing suburbs."
Enjoyable though it is, "Other People's Money" is hardly the definitive novel about the recent financial crisis heralded by some of its professional reviews. The plot is light, the characters stock, and the analysis of the banking world wistful rather than penetrating. Even Julian's misdeed is more like a white lie than a high crime - virtually everyone from the prime minister to the bank's customers and most lowly employees are better off as a result of his victimless legerdemain. On the Richter scale of fiction, OPM ranks somewhere between Peter Mayles and the Sebastian Faulkes of "A Week in December." It is no less readable for that, but it is hardly the "The Way We Live Now" of our times.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I found this disappointing in almost every way. Justin Cartwright sets himself up with some very large targets to aim at, but I feel he missed them all, except for one which I'll come back to.
Set aside the fact that the plot is unconvincing, because most of his readers won't be interested in the minute reality of running a bank into the ground. But at least he could have avoided leaden cliche, both in characterisation and speech: "Lovely jubbly, kushti." Really? And would the boss of one of the world's most venerable institutions reply, when complimented on his suit, "Gieves & Hawkes"? I found the continual posh-product-name dropping incredibly tiresome, a lazy and tedious way to try to convey the notion of wealth.
I found the characters unremittingly close to caricature too, none more so than Artair, the writer who comes across as a camped-up cross between Donald Sinden on E and Brian Blessed on a bad day.
So if you sacrifice accuracy of both detail and characterisation, what are you left with? A cracking good plot? For a while I thought this was it, but honestly, it peters out horribly. I've no doubt it is intentional. Its part of the big idea of the book. But if you write a book that's essentially reliant on plot, then you make the plot as undramatic as this one turns out to be, you're asking for trouble.
Which brings me to the one genuinely good thing about this book: I think it does convey well how little control anyone really has over the events that most shape their lives. But what a frustrating way to make this slim point.
He's a good-natured writer, but this is certainly not one of his better books, in my view.
Set aside the fact that the plot is unconvincing, because most of his readers won't be interested in the minute reality of running a bank into the ground. But at least he could have avoided leaden cliche, both in characterisation and speech: "Lovely jubbly, kushti." Really? And would the boss of one of the world's most venerable institutions reply, when complimented on his suit, "Gieves & Hawkes"? I found the continual posh-product-name dropping incredibly tiresome, a lazy and tedious way to try to convey the notion of wealth.
I found the characters unremittingly close to caricature too, none more so than Artair, the writer who comes across as a camped-up cross between Donald Sinden on E and Brian Blessed on a bad day.
So if you sacrifice accuracy of both detail and characterisation, what are you left with? A cracking good plot? For a while I thought this was it, but honestly, it peters out horribly. I've no doubt it is intentional. Its part of the big idea of the book. But if you write a book that's essentially reliant on plot, then you make the plot as undramatic as this one turns out to be, you're asking for trouble.
Which brings me to the one genuinely good thing about this book: I think it does convey well how little control anyone really has over the events that most shape their lives. But what a frustrating way to make this slim point.
He's a good-natured writer, but this is certainly not one of his better books, in my view.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a recent addition to the current crop of novels on life after the banking crisis. When Sir Harry Trevelyan-Tubal is felled by a stroke, chairmanship of the traditional, upmarket, family-run private bank, Tubal & Co, passes to a new broom, his son Julian. Seduced by hedge fund managers and the lure of gambling on derivatives, Julian finds himself saddled with "chunks of mortgages on an alligator farm in a swamp, two thousand worthless homes in Mississippi ... a shopping mall in a town flattened by a hurricane..." to give you a flavour of Cartwright's barbed wit. The only solution is to poach money from his family trust fund, to tide the bank over whilst a sensitive sale goes through to a stinking rich, status-conscious Coney-Islander-made-good American banker. Clearly, this is the basis for a sufficient disaster to whet your interest, although things may not turn out quite as expected. Certainly, it was enough to hook me after an initially slow start with a good deal of "telling" rather than "showing" the reader what to think.
Having read several of Cartwright's books, I would say that he is on form as regards some sharp, lively dialogues (with the drawback that sometimes you cannot work out who is speaking - see page 200 of the first hardback edition - where was the editor?), striking descriptions and thought-provoking observations. Although stereotypes without exception, his characters are well-developed. I liked little touches like the visionary producer Artair Macleod being reduced to putting on "The Wind in the Willows".
My main reservation about the book is its focus on the super-rich who will be comfortably off even in the worst case scenario. There is no hint of the real hardship that millions of innocent people have suffered as a result of the banks' irresponsibility.
So, the book cannot be more than the enjoyable, fairly lightweight satire, into which it settles after the climax of a potential crisis has been defused. Yes, Cartwright is making the sardonic point that "the rich are always with us" and the establishment will always look after its own, but liitle more than that - apart from the observation on our general lack of idealism: "Now, nobody thinks about reaping the benefits of freedom; instead they hope to win the lottery or become celebrities".
Cartwright likes to weave in references to another writer, in this case Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds" which plays on the idea of a story having many beginnings and ends, and many ways of telling it, or that "events take place one way, and we recount them the opposite way". Apart from the fact that these insights are fairly self-evident, I do not think "Other People's Money" illustrates these points in a particularly striking way.
Having read several of Cartwright's books, I would say that he is on form as regards some sharp, lively dialogues (with the drawback that sometimes you cannot work out who is speaking - see page 200 of the first hardback edition - where was the editor?), striking descriptions and thought-provoking observations. Although stereotypes without exception, his characters are well-developed. I liked little touches like the visionary producer Artair Macleod being reduced to putting on "The Wind in the Willows".
My main reservation about the book is its focus on the super-rich who will be comfortably off even in the worst case scenario. There is no hint of the real hardship that millions of innocent people have suffered as a result of the banks' irresponsibility.
So, the book cannot be more than the enjoyable, fairly lightweight satire, into which it settles after the climax of a potential crisis has been defused. Yes, Cartwright is making the sardonic point that "the rich are always with us" and the establishment will always look after its own, but liitle more than that - apart from the observation on our general lack of idealism: "Now, nobody thinks about reaping the benefits of freedom; instead they hope to win the lottery or become celebrities".
Cartwright likes to weave in references to another writer, in this case Flann O'Brien's "At Swim-Two-Birds" which plays on the idea of a story having many beginnings and ends, and many ways of telling it, or that "events take place one way, and we recount them the opposite way". Apart from the fact that these insights are fairly self-evident, I do not think "Other People's Money" illustrates these points in a particularly striking way.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Slow slow
You were expecting quick, quick, slow weren't you? Unfortunately not, only slow I'm afraid. Longwinded description of a set of people who have a connection of sorts with a bank, be... Read more
Published 1 month ago by karen bennett
My money well spent.
Other People's Money is a wonderful page turning read; it's well thought-out and rattles along. If you liked A Week In December I think you'll like this. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mrs. Tina Elliott
City Gents
A page turner and fun to read. Well informed about financial community behaviour. There must have been a number of alternative endings. Read more
Published 1 month ago by yorkist
Amusing - but overblown characters
This story of a traditional British bank getting out of its depth due to hedge fund gambles during the recent banking crisis is wittily told. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Tom Doyle
A very good readt
This book has a good story line, excellently drawn characters and pace. I just wanted to get back to it and watch it unfold.
A thoroughly good read.
A thoroughly good read.
Published 1 month ago by T. J. Ellis
HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVE
I read Other People's Money on the strength of the fantastic reviews it received. Whilst it doesn't quite live up to its billing (I'm not sure any book could), it is a very good... Read more
Published 1 month ago by M. Duncan
No Engagement...
Slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, (and dangerously so for such short a book) this tale of a family bank brought down by financial malfeasance somehow managed to lure me on, with an... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Boot-Boy
OPM sounds like opium but is more dangerous.
Some people are more worth then other people. This has been proven in the last 30 years again and again and recently also discussed in a meeting of such people in Davos. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Bertil
Poor Plot, Poor Characters
Most writers are either character driven or plot driven. Given the weakness of the later, I can only assume that Mr Cartwright is character driven. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Late-Night Reader
Whimsical at best
I bought OPM on the strength of cracking reviews in the good newspapers. On the positive side, the writing is strong on characterisation and description. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Longshanks
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