All I Could Get

All I Could Get: A Novel by Scott Lasser

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

August 21, 2003

Greed is Bad. That's the message of "All I Could Get" and it's about as subtle as a two-by-four to the head. The book is a morality tale about how getting caught up in greed and power leads nowhere...as long as you have a conscience, like Barry the main character does. In Barry's quest to make money, he betrays everyone from his boss to his friends to his wife and by the end has nothing to show for his efforts.

Lasser's writing is nothing special, but it does the job adequeately. The obvious problem for everyone without an MBA is following all the Wall Street lingo. I tried to follow along as best I could, but the technical issues of bond trading don't really matter to the STORY, so I was able to overlook that.

My other gripe is that the book is too short. The plot is always moving along so quickly that there's no real time for me as the reader to settle down and get comfortable with the characters. In the end all the other Wall Street guys come off like clones of each other (maybe that was the point) and no one except Barry has much depth to them. If Lasser had slowed down and developed the secondary characters more I think this would be a much more satisfying novel.

What I really like is the ending. I love the ambiguous ending where things may or may not work out for Barry. It's a lot better than a trite Happily Ever After ending and not as depressing as a sad ending where we know things won't work out. It's the sort of ending I can feel good about as a reader, but not TOO good.

I recommend reading this book and Lasser's previous novel, "Battle Creek", which I enjoyed more because I'm much more of a baseball fan than a Wall Street fan. "All I Could Get" is another good effort by Lasser and I hope he keeps it up.