Tuesday Book Club: Kate Jennings’ “Moral Hazard” (2002)
This week on Tuesday Book Club, Andrew Pople brought with him an Australian novel from 2002: Kate Jennings’ “Moral Hazard”. The book tells the story of Cath, an Australian in the Big Apple working a corporate job as a speechwriter for an investment bank. As a left leaning “bedrock feminist”, this is hardly Cath’s dream job, but with her husband Bailey diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she needs the money to pay for the exorbitant medical bills.
She finds another fading leftie on Wall Street, Mike, and together Cath and the reader learn the ins and outs of the most important street in New York at a time when the market was pelting towards crisis. Heartbreakingly, her only escape from the job she’s losing herself to seems to be with Bailey’s eventual death.
This weekend on Final Draft, Andrew talks more about the novel in the Australian Classics Book Club, which is back for another year! He, and Text Publishing’s David Winter will chat about it this Saturday at 10am- what better way to start Easter Saturday!
