A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism

Mountford's choppy debut features crudely drawn characters maneuvering against a backdrop of compelling fictionalized reportage. At the end of 2005, Gabriel de Boya, once an idealistic journalist, is living in Bolivia and working as a extravagantly compensated scout for a hedge fund, the Calloway Group, which is concerned about president-elect Evo Morales's plans for the country's oil and gas industries. Gabriel's attempts to exploit information about Morales's plans become complicated by a burgeoning romance with Morales's press secretary and by his divergence from his own earlier principles and his family's left-wing legacy. The Bolivian setting is colorful and engaging, as are the financial maneuverings, but the moral conflicts practically flash in neon, while minor characters are hobbled by convoluted or implausible backstories (Gabriel's mother, for example, before becoming a respected academic, fled Chile for the Soviet Union, and then defected to the United States; elsewhere, a Buddhist monk turned billionaire mining mogul resembles an "over-the-top supervillain in a James Bond movie"). Most problematic, though, is Gabriel, whose fate of embodying so many conflicts and contradictions leaves him feeling more like a construct than a person. (Apr.)