cover image Dear Money

Dear Money

Martha McPhee, . . Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25 (346pp) ISBN 978-0-15-101165-0

A novelist facing midlist obscurity trades her copy of Microsoft Word for a Bloomberg terminal in McPhee's uninspired latest. India Palmer, 38, married, mother of two, and a critical but not commercial success as a writer, has built her life around art but is distracted by the Wall Street wealth of her best friends, Emma and Will, even as they long for her life. When a hedge fund trader—appropriately named Win—arrives with a Faustian bargain, betting he can transform India into a money-making machine, she takes the bait. The transformation is not as unbelievable as it is boring; market money may be exciting, but the making of it is about as lively as dental school. McPhee (L'America ) offers a few intriguing finance tidbits, but mostly this is a middling tweak of a familiar story, though a fitting one for these times of shattered money dreams. (June)