This Bleeding City

I struggled to finish this book. I realised halfway through that I did not care about any of the characters. Wishing that the main character died is probably never a good thing when reading a novel.

I was reading an "Early Reviewer" copy which is marked as an uncorrected proof. Possibly this

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explains the strange punctuation and the sentences that go on, an on! I also struggled with the dialogue. It sounded flat, wooden and if one reads the words aloud, completely unnatural.

I was fairly certain how the book would end two-thirds of the way through the book. I only finished reading it on the basis that "no novel would be that obvious" But yes, it was.

Apart from Henry and Jo I found all the characters fairly unlikeable with no redeeming characteristics. They were poorly drawn, two dimensional stereotypes. The wide-boy city types, the mysterious French woman, the likeable girl next door type with a heart of gold who possibly can transform the main character, etc. {SPOILER} The character I was most interested kills herself in the middle of the book and the father/son characters just vanish. How many more novels this year are going to have the recession as a backdrop?

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This is an excellent first book. Mr. Preston has wisely decided to write about a world which he knows; that of the city trader. It is a foreign country to me and this novel does what any good representative of the genre should do - it puts the reader into the author's domain.

This is not the only

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book written about 'fat cat' traders, but it is by far the best that I have read. Preston's characters are real people instead of, as so often, figures out of a pantomime. The feel of the book is bleak and the city destroys all she touches and yet, the people are like you and me, they have their shameful moments but they are balanced by noble ones; and most of their time is spent simply existing.

Obsession is perhaps the theme of the work. Charlie Wales does not love his job but he cannot escape the adrenaline rush that it offers. Charlie's relationship with Vero appears to be the one truly, unquestionably good thing in his life: but is she; or is such perfection just another chimera?

The character of Henry, Charlie's closest friend, is the perfect foil. He represents us, the timid reader (ME!!!), who hasn't got the bottle to take on this high stress lifestyle, but envies those that do. Charlie takes both of the women in his life, Vero and Jo, from Henry. Charlie may waste their love, but Henry, for all that he is the nice guy, doesn't have the backbone required to fight for them.

This is a sombre book, which lets the reader know from the first few pages that things are not destined to end well but, the light poetic style of the writing always steers it from the danger of becoming morbid.

I eagerly anticipate a string of books with the name Alex Preston engraved upon the spine, and hope that Mr P is slaving over a hot PC keyboard, as I type, and that his next work will be published soon.

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I read a review copy as part of the Amazon Rising Stars programme and found this a quite extraordinary first novel. It takes us deep inside the world of the credit crunch from the perspective of a trader heavily involved in it. What I found astonishing was the maturity of the voice and - as has

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been mentioned in other reviews here - the fact that we empathise with the main character - Charlie - whilst never sympathising with him. Perhaps it's because I could see very clearly how one's head could be turned by the promised riches, and how deeply ingrained the kind of puritan ambition Charlie exhibits is, that I couldn't put this book down. It's a tragedy and the ending is quite unexpected. If I could give it six stars I would.

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My daughter works in finance, so the subject of this book was both depressingly familar and strangely surreal... I was just bowled over by some of the writing and thought the scene at the wedding in France was incredibly moving and took me back to when I was much younger/falling in love.
I did find

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the dialogue a bit heavy in places. It is thick and unrealistically dense, often seeming more like the author is trying to get over a very specific philiosphical argument rather than providing a glimpse into his characters.
I got a review copy from Waterstones and read it alongside John Lancheter's Whoops! They make very interesting reading-fellows. Lanchester is the outsider trying to dig into the intricacies of the world of finance, Preston is the financier trying to portray the emotional, rather than the financial, crash that he experienced.
I do think people will be reading this novel in the years to come. It is very much of its time, but seems to be doing something more than the non-fiction books dealing with the crash. This one will endure.

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I guess I misunderstood. When I read the description of This Bleeding City, it sounded like an fun story of fast life in the City of London, intrigue in the finance sector. I was expecting something like Grisham's The Apprentice, crooked financiers and their comeuppance.
I liked the sound of a touch

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of romance; a personal story, not just gritty corruption, with a naive graduate taking on the world.

That's not what it was at all. Ignoring the prologue (which caused me to spend the last 50 pages of the book wondering when we were going to catch up to that event), we are led into the world of Charlie Wales, studying at Uni and hung up about his family's lack of money and connection. He decides he wants to continue in the fast lane, make money fast and retire young. The only way to achieve this, he tells us, is to take a job in London, which he expects to hate, doing high finance, which he expects to devour his soul and leave him devoid of higher functions.

Perhaps it's me, but my sympathy is thin on the ground before the plot has had a chance to get moving. It is unclear why Charlie (and his friends) stick it out in London, continuing to despise the city and everyone they work with, spending their evenings bemoaning the reality of life in big business. His friends escape leaving him miserable and alone, about to be hit by the tidal wave of the financial crash.

There's more to it than that, of course. There's the romance angle: Vero who is not his girlfriend but sleeps with him on occasion but won't settle with him but there might be something more but he has to make more money to make her happy. To be fair to the girl, this appears to be his interpretation, not hers. Then there's the sweet girl working for a charity who sees the good in Charlie and helps him to break away from the finance world that is stealing his soul. He gets a job writing about the theatre - exactly what he wanted to do from the start. But then, that job isn't all that, and he's still not very happy, and the sweet girl is sort of boring, really, and so he throws it all away.

Another up, another down, and then we end where we started, with Charlie Wales working in the finance industry and wondering what happened to his life - except this time there's no youthful dreams to break up the dread of the office job in the finance sector.

I suppose if you want justification that London steals your soul and that city wideboys live deluded, unhappy shadows of normal life, the bleakness of this story could reassure you that your prejudices were justified.

I felt frustrated by the attitude from the start and so I fear the morality lesson was wasted on me.

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Reading the reviews below, it seems this one is divided between those who loved it and those who hated it. I'm sorry to say I fell into the latter camp, finding the characters hugely unlikeable and the writing clunky, telling when it should be showing. The characters seem far too self-aware and

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announce their own quirks as part of everyday conversation, rather than letting the reader make up his or her own mind about them.

I do believe there's an interesting book to be written on the subject of the financial collapse, yet for me this wasn't it. Others appear to disagree, so read all the reviews before making up your mind... after all, what do I know?

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