Moral Hazard - Tapa dura

‘An extraordinary novel: pleasurable and powerful, mordant and harrowing. Like Christina Stead, Jennings is an Australian whose native wit is combined with the energy of America – let’s hope that, unlike Stead, her talent is recognised.’ Amanda Craig, New Statesman

‘Powerful...darkly, disconcertingly comic...Jennings’s disturbing and memorable novel builds quietly to its thought-provoking climax.’ Margaret Walters, Sunday Times

‘A precise and vicious whirlwind of blacker than black comedy...a thought-provoking and ultimately enriching read.’ The List

‘Unsparing and unsentimental, Jennings conveys extraordinary characters with a wry, knowing intelligence through taut, spare prose in which no word is wasted. A perfect example of less is more, “Moral Hazard” is both touching and funny without ever being slushy.’ Big Issue

‘Jennings actually worked as a speechwriter for two large downtown investment banks; she turns her experience into fiction that feels like life... Early in the story, Cath telegraphs her values to the reader thorugh her favourite writers, who include Muriel Spark, Sylvia Townsend-Warner and Ivy Compton-Burnett...Jenning’s style shares these writers’ brevity, directness and authority, but conveys more warmth, more innocence. Working in the belly of the beast has served her writing well.’ London Review of Books

· Praise for Snake:

'Snake almost made the shortlist.' Simon Jenkins, chairman of the Booker panel 2000, The Times

'A writer of real power. Extraordinary.' Rose Tremain, Daily Telegraph

‘Stunning – the work of a powerful imagination’ Carol Shields.

‘It is an age-old theme, but Jennings explores it with feeling in this taut, poignant story. That she makes your heart ache for both her protagonists is a testimony to her artistry.’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

‘The chapters in Snake resemble a string of prose poems. Few are longer than a short paragraph, yet each is perfectly placed to forward a narrative of pure anguish.’ TLS

The moving and darkly humorous new novel from Kate Jennings, whose debut ‘Snake’ received a rapturous critical reception.

On Wall Street, reflects Cath, women are about as welcome as fleas in a sleeping bag. Funny, liberal and left-leaning, she is an unlikely candidate to be writing speeches on derivatives in a cubicle in a Manhattan tower, ‘putting words in the mouths of plutocrats deeply suspicious of metaphors and words of more than two syllables’. She finds herself on Wall Street because she needs serious money. After ten good years, her beloved older husband Bailey is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

So begins Cath’s journey into two nightmare worlds. By day she deals with the topsy-turvy logic and ingrown personalities at work in high finance; by night she has to watch the slow disintegration of the man she loves. In between, she must stop herself from falling apart. Friendship with Mike, a colleague and incognito socialist, helps her survive the assault course of the workplace with its vicious office politics. But as the money markets hurtle towards financial meltdown, Cath faces personal disaster and a moral hazard that she cannot ignore.

Kate Jennings’ prose is lean yet rich in unexpected, telling detail. Tense, taut and compulsively readable, ‘Moral Hazard’ is peopled by extraordinary characters and informed by a mordant, witty intelligence.