Chasing money can be its own form of illness. In this quirky and intriguing book, an aging investment banker navigates work, relationships, and the meaning of life in an increasingly bizarre world. This book asks questions about what really matters in life and where happiness can truly be found. It's a Bonfire of the Vanities but with a weird and magical overtone.

This was a clear case of right book, wrong time for me. While I appreciate the prose as well as the structure of the book, I just could not get into the narrative. Andy Sylvain is an interesting character, but the plot just... looses momentum quickly, and for me, never quite picked it up again. I kept asking myself why I was still reading - and honestly, I am not sure I know after having finished the novel.

This book is difficult to review as there were some really good themes here but I'm not convinced on how they were delivered. I think overall, this story could have been made a lot more intriguing with a different title, so we didn't know where the plot was going to go from the beginning, and I felt the language/editing needed a bit more work in places. Also, I would have liked to have seen far more conversations with his daughter and younger people, as I feel the generational aspect to his issues would have made an interesting discussion / angle to what was happening.

It's an interesting, but not necessarily enjoyable book, which I'm glad to have read. Many thanks to NetGalley and Heresy Press for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book is not BAD, but there is so much clunky information coming from every angle constantly, you can 1. barely keep it all straight and 2. decipher what is important and what is not. It's not the worst book in the world, but I would not recommend.

I loved this book. At first, I thought it might be only understandable to those familiar with finance, but that is not the case. It's a book about people and society, about needs and wants, fulfillment, and the emptiness of achieving misguided goals, It's well written and was an enjoyable read. I was sorry when I got to the end.

I tried my luck on one of netgalley’s ‘read now’ books and have no regrets. What a different novel. There were times when I wondered to myself while reading this, is it trying to hard or is it quietly insightful? If I hadn’t been reading on my kindle I would have been so annoyed with the word choices. This author did not waste a moment to demonstrate her large vocabulary but it also made the writing unique so I can respect that. There was a lot of financial jargon that went way over my head though.
If you love unhinged, unreliable main characters that don’t think they are unhinged then this is the story for you. It that centers on the self proclaimed ‘masters of the universe’ finance bros and how you can have all the money in the world but cannot buy fulfillment. Check it out if you have the time, a great debut.

A great debut novel that delivers deep insight into the workings of Wall Street banking while exploring the emotional and spiritual search of one Master of the Universe named Andy Sylvain who is looking for a way to exit the rat race. A beautifully written, well told story.

This novel is deceptively light on the surface and gut-punchingly heavy on the context. It is structured as a chronicle of disintegration, starting off at a high-end party at the Pierre Hotel, and ending (spoiler alert!) in a hut in the upstate New York woods. In the first pages we’re introduced to a debonaire, carefree life of a middle-aged bond trader, Andy Sylvain, who attends a lavish costume party for the Wall Street bigwigs. Andy is on top of his career, financially secure, with a younger girlfriend, a mansion in Westchester and a pied-a-terre in Manhattan. But as he celebrates his 50th birthday, a certain ennui, the kind that cannot even be defined, begins to plague him.

There’s an underlying uncertainty, in Andy’s mind, about who he is. On the one hand, he’s a Master of the Universe, a hotshot bond trader. He recoils in horror when his financially illiterate girlfriend casually calls him a ‘stockbroker.’ (There’s apparently a vast hierarchical difference between the two). On the other hand, he often deliberately misrepresents what he does for a living. On numerous occasions we see him describing himself as a financial advisor, an accountant, or a mortgage broker, especially when talking to laymen. Andy’s idea of self is broken: he, like many of his Wall Street buddies, is on top of the finance world, and he generally wants everyone to know this (one of his friends wishes that a Hollywood movie be made about people like them), but simultaneously he wants to be someone else, to be known as someone else. In his quiet moments we see him project different personalities onto himself: a movie director, a working-class man, a drifter-biker. Still, he doesn’t find any of those alternative life paths that he could’ve taken satisfying. This lack of ontological footing underpins his personality and is the main cause of his restlessness.

This is the central push-and-pull of the novel: Andy is a smart, situationally-attuned guy who could be using his talents in a different, more benign domain, but who is stuck in the crude world of finance. He would leave that world, if he knew how.

There’s a harrowing digression in the text into the question of penitence. For an average Wall Street tale––and we’ve seen many in the past decade––it’s a vastly underexplored theme. It is underexplored and often unacknowledged, perhaps, because it would lead us to a dispiriting conclusion. By this point in the novel it is clear to us that for guys like Andy there could be no reckoning; the system is built to be lenient to the rich and powerful. Still, we’ve all seen the everyday symptoms of those successful, powerful men’s inner discontent: they seek physically dangerous thrills––climbing Mount Everest, flying into space, diving to the Titanic, etc. Where does that need come from? The author, Katerina Grishakova, sees, in this search for danger, a deeper, furtive need for absolution; she zooms in and dwells on this phenomenon for two full chapters. The setting is a secretive, upscale rehab where Andy goes after a bad trade. The rehab is built around that need: the patients, all men of importance, have the option, for a price of several thousand dollars a day, to engage in supervised acts of self-flagellation. Reading the rehab scenes was like treading on thin ice: the pages fill you with exhilaration and disbelief. Exhilaration, because you sense where the author is trying to go; disbelief, because you doubt she can get there without losing the plot. Grishakova resorts to Biblical and philosophical allusions to get the point across, sometimes allowing the text to slide into an almost absurd, horror category. But, mostly it works. Andy is shaken by the implications, he resists the designation of the penitent (he’s not a criminal, he’s just a cog in the system!), and leaves the rehab after a few days. Still, this experience lays the foundation for his final abdication.

Finally, there’s the issue of agency: Andy, despite being a big swinging dick, is not in control of his life. Up to the midpoint of the novel things happen to him, and it is only in later chapters that he is beginning to take charge. Taking charge comes at a cost; it means shedding the attributes of his coddled, privileged life, losing an important part of self. By the time he’s standing, facing the dark woods, the unknown, we know he’s ready for the transformation. It’s an astonishing narrative arc to pull off even for a seasoned writer, but I think Grishakova succeeded in this striking, through-provoking debut.

I’m a serious reader; I thought I enjoyed modest success also as a writer.

Alas, having read The Hermit, a first novel by a newly published author, I realize that not I but Kristina Grishakova is a writer while I am merely a typist.

A legendary book editor when asked what she seeks in a manuscript said, “The first thing I want to know is: Does it work at the sentence level?”

At the sentence level, The Hermit works so spectacularly well that, all by itself, it represents literature of extraordinary value.

It is not all by itself, however. Grishakova’s command of language, while no less than uncanny, also manages to wield a tale that is positively mesmerizing.

The author snares the reader from the get-go, creating an environment--the nosebleed-high world of finance and investment, in particular upscale bond trading--populated by characters worth caring about, set in scenes and circumstances throbbing with the sweet stress that is essential to worthy dramatic narratives.

At the same time as she constructs an environment that is downright alien to economic amateurs like me, it is a world that is somehow also eerily familiar. Questions exploring the nature of ambition and greed, competition and conciliation, love and hate, not to mention life and death, resonate throughout the length and breadth of the text. Even as her characters sometimes struggle and at other times thrive, in a milieu that is in many ways foreign to this reader, I recognized the cast as folks whom I encounter daily in my own personal, privileged, advantaged life.

Intermittently shocking and surprising, notwithstanding an abundance of imaginative plot twists and turns, there is at the same an undergirding inevitably to the tale’s relentless journey. Sometimes joyful, at other times despairing, Kristina Grishakova’s The Hermit is wretchedly, and splendidly human.

I was engrossed by The Hermit. Throughout the variety of scene, incident, and character, there weaves a common thematic thread: how to make sense of a successful life that yet seems empty at its core? And more importantly, how to set a new course for this drifting ship? Grishakova tells Andy’s tale with great assurance, in sparkling prose. Her insider knowledge of the financial industry is used to great effect without overburdening the reader with too much jargon. There is humor, nuanced psychological exploration, and lively dialogue. The asylum scenes are reminiscent of Thomas Mann’s sanatorium in the Alps (in The Magic Mountain), and I heard echoes of Tom Wolfe in the way greed, financial shenanigans, and existential restlessness are treated. The Hermit is a gem of a debut, which makes me look forward to Grishakova’s next.

Katerina Grusakova is a former bond trader, now seemingly an author. It is obvious from her writing that she is not American born. There are so many long words, used incorrectly that it almost seems as she is trying to impress us with her vocabulary. Birds "flittering" across a lake? Really?

Anyway, as to the novel, it is chock full of so much that it is difficult to discern what it is about. Andy is 50 years old when it begins, and a successful bond trader. Grushakoval obviously knows a lot about this profession, but does not make it clear, at least to me, what he actually does. I just know that he uses a Bloomberg terminal, as well as three other screens to do it.

Andy has an (almost) ex-wife and an 18-year-old daughter who is a freshman in college. Both these women are living a more genuine existence than Andy is. At least I think that was the contrast the author intended. The title is not explained until the very end. In between there are adults playing silly games, bros (?), women in a man's world, rehab facilities like none I've heard of before, technology, a right-wing cookout, and a Russian Orthodox funeral. It's a novel trying to say too much about too many things in our society.

Overall, this book gave me a headache, forcing me to massage my temples like some of its female characters do. Somehow, though, I feel that his author will get a good editor and have something more comprehensible to offer in her next effort. Thanks to NetGalley and Heresy Press for the ARC copy.