Opening Belle: A Novel
Written by Maureen Sherry
Narrated by Julia Whelan
4/5
()
About this audiobook
It’s 2008 and Isabelle, a thirty-something Wall Street executive, appears to have it all: the sprawling Upper West Side apartment; three healthy children; a handsome husband; and a job as managing director at a large investment bank. But her reality is something else. Her work environment resembles a frat party, her husband feels employment is beneath him, and the bulk of childcare logistics still fall in Belle’s already crowded lap.
Enter Henry, the former college fiancé she never quite got over; now a hedge fund mogul. He becomes her largest client, and Belle gets to see the life she might have had with him. While Henry campaigns to win Belle back, the sexually harassed women in her office take action to improve their working conditions, and recruit a wary Belle into a secret “glass ceiling club” whose goal is to mellow the cowboy banking culture and get equal pay for their work. All along, Belle can sense the financial markets heading toward their soon-to-be historic crash and that something has to give—and when it does, everything is going to change: her marriage, her career, her bank statement, and her colleagues’ frat boy behavior.
Optioned by Reese Witherspoon who called it “smart, biting, and honest,” Opening Belle is “funny, relevant, and often shocking….Even if your own life is far from a fairy tale, it will allow you to laugh, learn, and maybe even lean in—to hug your own family a little closer.” (The Washington Post).
Maureen Sherry
Maureen Sherry graduated with a BS from Cornell University and worked on Wall Street for twelve years. She went on to receive an MFA from Columbia University in nonfiction writing. Several years ago, she and her family moved into a historic apartment, where she found herself wondering about the family living there before them. She added to the history of the apartment by embedding, with the help of an architect, a mystery that would eventually be solved by her children. The apartment and her four children are the real-world inspiration for this book.
Related to Opening Belle
Related audiobooks
According to a Source: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Theory of Opposites: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Window Opens: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Breathe In, Cash Out: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Trophy Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Limelight: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chasing Harry Winston Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Regulars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Small Admissions: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bucket List: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cobble Hill: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5When Life Gives You Lululemons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stylist: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boys' Club: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chasing Harry Winston: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stay Up with Hugo Best: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Certain Girls Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In Twenty Years: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Musical Chairs: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Starter Wife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spare Wife Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Your Perfect Year: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5She Regrets Nothing: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Truth and Other Hidden Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perfect on Paper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Matchmaking for Beginners: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Citizen Girl Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
Contemporary Women's For You
It Ends with Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paris Apartment: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Measure: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Apothecary: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Book of Lost Names Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ugly Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wrong Place Wrong Time: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Starts with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Then She Was Gone: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Family Upstairs: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The People We Keep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In Five Years: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maame: A Today Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weyward: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Missing Girls: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Change: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slammed: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love and Other Words Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reminders of Him: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5November 9: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Winter Garden Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Firefly Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Club: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confess Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe in Another Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Forever, Interrupted: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Third Mrs. Galway Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Opening Belle
82 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Now here is a book from a former Managing Director at a Wall St investment bank - where few women ever rise to that level, and where the few that do have to put up with incredible harassment and abuse from their male co-workers, and where it's mostly "every bitch for herself". SO I BELIEVE EVERY WORD. I LOVED this book! Isabelle, mother of three, with a slacker discontented husband "babysitting" at home, devotes all the time required by her company to succeed at work and to pull down seven figure bonuses - but she knows it isn't working. When a group of female co-workers decide to try and do something to change the poisonous culture, Isabelle's not quite on board - she doesn't want to be seen as a whiner and she needs that $$$ to keep rolling in. Plus she's just a bit sanctimonious about doing better than they are. Well, hang on, girl, because EVERYTHING'S about to change, and 2008 is coming up soon.This is a very well written domestic and financial thriller. Don't miss it!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/53.5 stars.
More meat here than in your average Sophie Kinsella novel, and mostly it kept me excited to keep reading. But it got a little soapbox-y at times, and I'm not sure it did a great job explaining the roles of traders and bankers in the subprime mortgage crisis, at least in a way that the lay reader would understand. I also wasn't always clear whether Belle was meant to be telling her story as she lived it, or whether she was recounting it some years down the road. Some textual clues pointed one way, some the other. One of those clues involved a big jump in time near the end that felt a little like the author wasn't sure how to write a particular climactic event, so she decided to skip it and show the aftermath instead.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.