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A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism

by Peter Mountford (Goodreads Author)

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 194 ratings · 62 reviews

On his first assignment for a rapacious hedge fund, Gabriel embarks to Bolivia at the end of 2005 to ferret out insider information about the plans of the controversial president-elect. If Gabriel succeeds, he will get a bonus that would make him secure for life. Standing in his way are his headstrong mother, herself a survivor of Pinochet’s Chile, and Gabriel’s new love i...more

Paperback, 304 pages

Published April 12th 2011 by Mariner Books (first published March 15th 2011)

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Jan 22, 2011 Cheryl/Aradanryl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Cheryl/Aradanryl by: First Reads-GoodReads

Shelves: first-read-arc-giveaway, bolivia, main-character-adult-male, realistic-fiction, relationships, ethics, capitalism, thought-provoking, adventure, south-america, setting-bolivia, favorites, review-bn

Stunningly well written book that left me deep in thought at the conclusion. No doubt in my mind this one will be showing up on award lists as a winner.

I've rarely wished I knew someone who read the same book, but today I do. Incredible first novel, I will watch for his next, that's for sure! Will be recommending this one to our college's book club as one of those books that begs for discussion afterwards.

This book was so good, I'll make sure it is in our local library.

*Note: This book was pro...more

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Mar 27, 2012 Regan Hawkins rated it 5 of 5 stars

Gritty, visceral and rivetingly readable I can't believe my good fortune to have spotted this novel perched upon my local library's recommended shelf. Hotter than a pistol Mountford's prose is piquant and snappy, I for one am hanging out for his follow up. Now etched into my mind's-eye the plot captured time and place to take me on a journey I won't forget in a hurry. I've read a bit of NF about the hedge funds and financial meltdown but didn't ecpect to find this sort of insight, to the hubris...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Bonnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

My brother gave me this book to read because it's about an ambiguously Hispanic guy named Gaby. He said he thinks it's a "guy book", but I loved it - whatever that means. This is the best modern novel I've read in awhile. Just one of those can't-put-it-down, made me laugh then made me cry, really really care about the characters kind of books.

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Apr 09, 2013 Kristianne rated it 3 of 5 stars

From my interview with Peter in October:

KH: How do you consciously deal with the responsibility of—you say you don’t want to do polemical work, but you’re bringing in history, or current events . . .

PM: Weighted issues . . . Right. I think that’s why I need ambivalence myself. Evo Morales for me is an interesting person because, at that time especially, and even to this day, he is a very complicated guy. He’s not corrupt, I know he’s not corrupt, but it’s not obvious that he is a great leader. H...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Literary Review The rated it 5 of 5 stars

By Gabriel Blackwell

For The Literary Review
Volume 54 "Emo, Meet Hole"

I am as fascinated by A&E’s reality show Hoarders as I am terrified by it. I fear this
compulsion as I fear the cliff’s edge—I have no wish to throw myself off, but what if
I suddenly did? We say that compulsion is a slippery slope, as if we could ski to safety, but to me it seems a drop-off. Beware. The fascination is in watching people lose
the ground beneath their feet through a single moment’s inattention. Compulsion,
l...more

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Jan 16, 2012 Debbie Reschke Schug rated it 5 of 5 stars

After I had gotten my master’s in journalism and decided that I could no longer stand to do my night-shift position as a morning news producer in a market 119 TV station in southern Illinois even though I had no other job prospects, I moved into my parent’s house in Chicago.
This was the summer of 2005, so I was experiencing my-own-private-recessionary job market in a boom time. Everyone around me seemed to be doing great, though, buying houses and expensive cars, wearing fancy shoes and glasses...more After I had gotten my master’s in journalism and decided that I could no longer stand to do my night-shift position as a morning news producer in a market 119 TV station in southern Illinois even though I had no other job prospects, I moved into my parent’s house in Chicago.
This was the summer of 2005, so I was experiencing my-own-private-recessionary job market in a boom time. Everyone around me seemed to be doing great, though, buying houses and expensive cars, wearing fancy shoes and glasses, going out for drinks and appetizers every night of the week…just generally having a good time and showing it. Meanwhile, I was sweating away in an un-air-conditioned basement of a bungalow preparing to be a very part-time teacher (for a surprisingly low wage) at a nearby city college in its communications department without a lot else to do.
In what was to be the last summer of my father’s life and probably the last sweet thing he did for me, he decided that since I was going to be a journalism “professor,” he would buy me a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. So I spent every morning reading those daily papers from cover to (really!) cover.
One of the stories getting a lot of coverage in the Journal that I became weirdly obsessed with was the Bolivian election of Evo Morales. I’m not certain why, but probably playing into my interest was my discovery that the world was topsy-turvy, that the dumb people were becoming successful, and the truly smart and talented people (yes, I was in that kind of self-righteous state of mind) were being left behind, except in this one instance, this one election, where someone (indigenous and a proletariat!) had a chance to truly take care of a such an exploited country. It probably gave me some false sense of hope.
I kinda forgot about that period of my life, but when I read “A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism,” by Peter Mountford, holay jeeze, it all came back. Honestly, the book seems to tap directly into that overeducated, jealous, lonely, Master of Science graduate seething about the unfairness of the world in my parent’s basement. It captures that sense of wanting in a world where everyone appears to be having and does so in the context of the ’05 Bolivian election.
This is the type of book I’ve been waiting to read, and I can only hope that Mountford and other young writers like him continue to crank stuff out like this as they get a few years removed from the last decade of madness we just emerged from.
Personally, I can’t stop feeling like the 2000s didn’t happen…of course, they did happen, but it seems like a big reset button has been pushed (a lot of those bought houses are being foreclosed on now, the fancy shoes and eyewear aren’t in fashion anymore, a lot of those trendy restaurants have shuttered their doors). So, it’s easy to cop-out and say, “That was then, this is now,” when thinking about those times. But I’m relying on books like this one to remind me what we all did and didn’t do in those years and what it’s taught us about ourselves.
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Oct 23, 2011 Richard Bon rated it 4 of 5 stars

As I read this book, I came to despise the protagonist, the young, uber agressive, lustful (of money and women), ethically challenged Gabriel. The story follows his work during the final months of 2005 in Bolivia conducting clandestine "research" for a hedge fund, usually under the cover of being a freelance jounalist.

I became frustrated with how seemingly easy it was for Gabriel to extract information from lovers, to both of whom he reveals his true purpose in Bolivia. Each of these women, whos...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Jon-Erik rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, estudios-americalatinos

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Peter was a classmate of mine in college. "Acquaintance" might even be overstating it. We had friends in common. My reaction to this book reminds me of when I once prepared a Mexican dinner for a family who hosted me at their house. One of them said, "I knew this would be good, but I didn't know it would be GOOD." I wasn't just introducing them to the world of tortillas and cheese. I had scrutinized every ingredient, made everything from scratch, and brought my experience to bear on it. That's m...more

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Apr 05, 2011 Neal rated it 4 of 5 stars

In one chapter of my forthcoming biography of Robert Ripley, I recount the eccentric, world-traveling “Believe It or Not” cartoonist’s months-long journey through South America in 1925, during which Ripley writes that Bolivia’s sky-high capital, La Paz, looked as if someone had flung the city of Reno into the Grand Canyon. So when fellow Seattleite Peter Mountford, a friend of a former newspaper colleague, offered to send me an advance copy of his first novel, which takes place in La Paz in late...more

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May 17, 2013 Rio Coffelt-roth-barreiro rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really got a feel for both the history and culture of Bolivia in this book. It is a little bit of a basic primer into the world of hedge fund trading at the same time, as well as a look into how people are seduced into a very sleazy, cynical and amoral line of work (hint: it's money). The main character is a total schmuck and reading through his bumbling, callow and callous interactions with a cast of characters who contrast with him so strongly with their ideals, senses of purpose and earnest...more

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Aug 12, 2011 Wm rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

Killer idea; poor execution. It's a pity about that too. I pulled this off the library's new(ish) books shelf because of the title. I checked it out because it had quotes on the back from two authors whose work I had enjoyed. This book is worth reading as a failed experiment -- it's about a former second-rate biz journalist turned hedge fund analyst who is trying to get some intelligence regarding likely political changes in Bolivia that would affect their commodities market. But it's only worth...more

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May 14, 2011 Newengland rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: finished-in-2011, contemporary

Bolivia? Hedge funds?

You can't fault this book for being run-of-the-mill. None of that American suburban angst blah-blah-blah (go to the mall, have a drink, etc.), and none of that "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" Europe yet again stuff, either. La Paz, of all places! And a young Americano who wants to make a lot of money in a hurry because he cannot believe his good luck, being newly-employed by a rapacious hedge fund (wait, is that redundant?).

Thing is, he needs information, and he ten...more Bolivia? Hedge funds?

You can't fault this book for being run-of-the-mill. None of that American suburban angst blah-blah-blah (go to the mall, have a drink, etc.), and none of that "If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium" Europe yet again stuff, either. La Paz, of all places! And a young Americano who wants to make a lot of money in a hurry because he cannot believe his good luck, being newly-employed by a rapacious hedge fund (wait, is that redundant?).

Thing is, he needs information, and he tends to sleep with women who have access to it, and, you know, you don't shit where you eat and all that, so look out world, here comes a South American version of the morality play. Will he? Won't he? Will SHE? Won't she? God (or the Bolivian bellhop) only knows.

If you like plot, plot, plot, this book is not, not, not what you want. It's a characterization book and, considering Mountford is a first-time novelist, a pretty darn good one. Our young 20-something hero is a guy named Gabe who's always thinking the angles. He has two "love" interests as well as Mom dropping in on him after a little "accident" among Bolivia's restive natives. These women give him more than he bargains for. What's great, though, is the way Mountford resists the easy Aesop morals. Capitalism and greed, after all, makes excellent fodder for authors who want to teach us right from wrong. This book doesn't fall into that trap, however. Instead, we get no easy answers from characters who cannot be pegged so easily as "good" or "bad" -- just like life!

Finally, I think Peter Mountford is a writer to be watched. I, for one, will be reading his sophomore effort when it comes out. He's a descriptive writer who understands character. Every once in a while I found myself rereading a line just to enjoy its rhythm and nuance. No, it's not riveting reading, but it's pleasing.

So, if you like a little travel writing in your fiction reading and a little coming-of-age angle (and yes, 20-sorts are still "growing up" in our day and age because they take longer than they used to), then this just may be your book, gringo.(less)

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Aug 05, 2011 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

"[...]Despite being one of the safest and most prosperous countries in human history, the United States was actually a very bizarre place. Elsewhere in the world, the unattainability of great fame and fortune was more readily accepted, and so life was less driven by grandiose fantasies. Elsewhere, people wouldn't tell their children that they could achieve anything, because, of course, they couldn't."

I saw Peter Mountford's book while browsing through NetGalley and was intrigued by the title. T...more "[...]Despite being one of the safest and most prosperous countries in human history, the United States was actually a very bizarre place. Elsewhere in the world, the unattainability of great fame and fortune was more readily accepted, and so life was less driven by grandiose fantasies. Elsewhere, people wouldn't tell their children that they could achieve anything, because, of course, they couldn't."

I saw Peter Mountford's book while browsing through NetGalley and was intrigued by the title. Then I basically let it sit on my I-pad for a while, and had to download it again after it expired. One day, I was leafing through my college alumni magazine, and saw in the alumni updates, that Peter Mountford went to college with me, at the same time I did. This would be incredibly unremarkable, except for the fact that I went to a college with only 850 people and I'm the type of person that gets excited when I know someone that does something. So, I bumped the book up the queue, and boy am I happy that I did.

Mountford's novel takes place mostly over a few days in the life of Gabriel Francisco de Boya, the novel's protagonist, and a freelance journalist turned "researcher" for a predatory hedge fund. He has been sent to Bolivia by his new boss to investigate any potential impact that societies' politics and economy might have on the US markets. Gabriel pretends to be a journalist as he tries to get close to the "higher ups," both foreign and local, to find the information that will essentially keep him his brand new job: a job that he supposes will earn him enough money for early retirement after only a few years. Gabriel, as the son of a single mother who is a liberal professor, struggles with his identity as henchman for the dark specter of capitalism, but also with his tenuous position as a member of the New York elite with whom he graduated from Brown.

Mountford studied international relations and his father worked for the IMF (according to an interview at the Millions), and his book is heavy on the academics. The book contains lengthy discussion of South American economic policy, Bolivian history, the behavior of markets, game theory, and other things that I've never personally been super interested in (except for game theory, which is pretty cool). And yet, these mini-lectures flow seamlessly with the other aspects of the novel: the suspense of Gabriel's precarious situation, the romance between Gabriel and a member of the newly elected president of Bolivia's staff, and the internal struggles that Gabriel faces concerning his own family, his own economic and moral quandary, and his relationship with the culture of Bolivia and his own mixed ethnicity. The internal ruminations on his race and on his desire are some of the most interesting and provocative in the book. For example:

"Growing up, he never considered the possibility that his identity might be a fixed thing, that it might not be something that could or should be adjusted for each situation. He had been born with multiple identities, after all: Californian, Chilean, Soviet, bourgeois, only child of a single mother, Latino, Caucasian. In these, he saw options."

or

"Not that Gabriel was, or ever, had been, a greedy person; but money, in general -- the plain and unassailable acts of acquiring and spending it -- had turned out to occupy a more important role in adulthood than he'd expected. The issue finally wasn't that he wanted to be rich, per se, but that he wanted to be done with so much wanting. It was a feedback loop, and the only way out was deeper in: he needed to have enough money to be done with the issue of money forever."

In the end, it is these internal struggles that lie at the heart of the book. Near the end of the book, a member of the hotel staff where Gabriel is staying tells him that he is a "sh***y person" and that he, Alejo, "[is] not like [Gabriel]." In response Gabriel "envied the purity of that perspective, the tender idea that the world was place where good people and bad people were locked in an epic struggle -- what a gorgeous notion!" It is ambiguity that in the end forces some of the most difficult decisions for Gabriel in the book, and the decisions that he makes remain shrouded in the same ambiguity. There is something to say here about human nature and our paradoxical relationship to certainty and desire. In desiring to stop desiring, we still desire. In our quest for certainty, we find ambiguity.

Mountford is masterful at interweaving all of the elements that make this book educational, thoughtful and also really readable. Not much about this book disappointed me as a reader (maybe a couple moments where the dialogue was a little too clever), and I hope to see more from this promising debut novelist. I would highly recommend this book; it's one of my favorites of the year so far.

**Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review(less)

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Jun 19, 2011 Amanda rated it 4 of 5 stars

For some reason, I always want to give books fractions of stars. A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism<\i> should probably get 3.75 stars. It's not quite four, but definitely not three.
Jason recommended this to me, and I can see why he enjoyed it. Mountford's writing style is spare, but he finds the perfect words to describe people/things; his dialogue is also quite good. The plot was complex enough to be engaging, but not complex enough to disorient a reader without a background in Bol...more

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Jan 24, 2011 Jeanine Walker rated it 5 of 5 stars

This novel is beautifully written, replete with large themes and small insights, and Mountford’s deftly worded explanations about the workings of a hedge fund in a small third-world country is a college course in itself. I found myself fascinated by Gabriel, the main character—he reads to me, for much of the book, like the hero I want to be: smart, crafty, appealing and attractive, and able to succeed at making, in his words, “a s***load of money.” And while the reader hopes—and expects—that he’...more

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Apr 26, 2011 camilla rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2011, chb-staff-picks

A great debut in the vein of Adam Haslett and Jess Walters, A Young Man's Guide introduces a talented new voice in morally ambiguous Gabriel. The son of a headstrong single mother who fled Pinochet and became a liberal professor in California, Gabriel thrillingly takes a job with a predatory hedge fund to go undercover in La Paz, Bolivia at the end of 2005. After casting a web of lies and deceit he must decide where his ultimate loyalties lie when he starts to fall for the new president-elect's...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Debbie Boucher rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this because a friend of mine went ot Peter Mountford's book launch in Seattle. She suggested it because she knows my third book is set in Bolivia. Peter's book is set there as well, though the Bolivia he writes about was a bit foreign to me. He lived in Ecuador and visited Bolivia, and that shows, but it's stil a great book. I loved his writing style. I loved that I was enthralled by the real subject of this book which is what it's like to work for a hedge fund. Who knew how interesting...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Ravi Jain rated it 4 of 5 stars

My complaints with the novel are really around the use of the women as stand-ins for the political conflicts, and sex as the vehicle for plot twists. This seems shallow and, even for someone with Gabriel's background, a bit too convenient, and too close to a Matt Damon or Tom Cruise movie.

Nonetheless, the novel seems dead-on in its description of the wearying life of the expatriate press and IMF/World Bank reps, who are always metaphorically in Joan Didion's or Pico Iyer's airport lounge, always...more

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Mar 24, 2012 Sheyda rated it 1 of 5 stars

So, I thought this reasonably well-reviewed contemporary novel would contrast nicely with Balzac's Pere Goriot, and thus I decided to give myself a brief respite from the literature of olden times and read something new. The books possessed many themes in common--the relationship between maturity and personal ambition, the machinations of finance capitalism, the moral and emotional consequences of "striving"--and I took it as serendipitous that I had read a reasonably tantalizing review of The Y...more So, I thought this reasonably well-reviewed contemporary novel would contrast nicely with Balzac's Pere Goriot, and thus I decided to give myself a brief respite from the literature of olden times and read something new. The books possessed many themes in common--the relationship between maturity and personal ambition, the machinations of finance capitalism, the moral and emotional consequences of "striving"--and I took it as serendipitous that I had read a reasonably tantalizing review of The Young Man's Guide while I was finished Goriot..

I finish this book feeling as if I should have shut up and stayed put in the 19th century.

But, why? Well, my first instinct, about 100 pages before the end, was to think that the novel failed as a novel--the story felt too familiar, the characters' motivations inexplicable yet unsurprising, the "drama" rather boring. This gave me pause though. What if, like Don Draper, I only like the beginnings of things? The world that Balzac introduced us to was in the process of becoming. It still possessed, as I noted in my review of Goriot something akin to "liberatory potential." The world that Mountford writes about is the same shitty world I live in. I know people like the protagonist (well, happily, I only know of them...). I know people like his mother. I read blog posts and Times articles and facebook status updates about the dastardly deeds of companies like the Calloway Group. Is it just that I'm mind-numbingly bored with the realities of my own time?

No, but I think the author of the novel certainly is. The characters were references instead of people. They were soulless; vessels into which the reader was supposed to pur their own projections about what makes people ambitious, what makes them want so much all the time. In all of its mockery of liberal do-gooder intellectuals, the film committed the first sin of liberal, intellectual do-gooderism: it cartoonified complex moral questions, questions about desire, love, and identity. I was left vaguely hating everyone and understanding no one.

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Aug 19, 2011 Marquina rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is exactly the type I enjoy reading. I had no preconceived notions and learned quite a bit about Bolivia, as well as what thoughts swim inside the mind of a hedge-funder - hypothetically, of course. The history of industry in La Paz, Bolivia and how it relates to the global economy was eye-opening. Prior to reading this book, I had known little about the country. The novel is a well-written depiction of how politics, industry, poverty, and greed shape lives. I set down the book several...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Barbara marked it as to-read

Shelves: south-america, published-in-2011, found-via-first-reads, in-bolivia

I'm very interested in reading this book. The reviews that I've seen are great, and I love the fact that Peter Mountford, the author, has lived in so many places, including Ecuador, Scotland, Mexico, New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles (and I'm sure I left a few places out.) I love reading books written by well-traveled writers because they really can give the locations in their books a "sense of place" -- something that is so wonderful about many books. This also seems to be a very inter...more

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Oct 07, 2011 Eli Hastings rated it 5 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: Peter is a friend and colleague.

There are countless things to commend about this novel: the authenticity of the representation of Bolivian culture; the twistedly true rendition of love affairs; the depth of the author's (and protagonist's) understanding of politics and economics; the success of the novelization of what was the author's experience (vs. the feeling that he should have written a memoir). But most of all what's superb is the moral distress of the protagonist, the teeter...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Sherry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Really liked this book. A good, fast read. Liked the characters, writing and learning more of the history of Bolivia. It also made me want to visit!

Story is about Gabriel, on assignment to La Paz, for a hedge fund, to ferret out insider info about the plans of a newly elected President.

He does succeed and gets very rich from his efforts. Unfortunately because of his methods he loses in love. Both his mother and girlfriend leave him and we meet him a few years later, rich, sad and alone.

The endin...more

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Jan 19, 2011 Kevin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Received a galley through a web promotion and got into the story very easily. There's a quality to the writing - I want to call it "new masterpiece." The voice is strong and sure, and the details are so well-rendered. Though it's clearly a contemporary novel, it has the feeling of being written a while ago mostly because it's drawing from a great literary tradition and it feels strong enough to last. On top of the stellar quality of the writing is the intriguing story. It's commentary on globali...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Raphaela rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a review I wrote for Bookslut:

Peter Mountford’s debut novel, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, provides refreshing insight into the seemingly clear-cut stories of unchecked corporate greed which have become ubiquitous in recent headlines. Mountford’s portrayal of Gabriel de Boya, a young hedge fund lackey who is seduced by the ethically sticky world of Big Finance, brings a much-needed human element to the pervasive theme of big-business avarice.

Gabriel is on assignment in La Paz,...more This is a review I wrote for Bookslut:

Peter Mountford’s debut novel, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, provides refreshing insight into the seemingly clear-cut stories of unchecked corporate greed which have become ubiquitous in recent headlines. Mountford’s portrayal of Gabriel de Boya, a young hedge fund lackey who is seduced by the ethically sticky world of Big Finance, brings a much-needed human element to the pervasive theme of big-business avarice.

Gabriel is on assignment in La Paz, posing as a political journalist as he scouts for Calloway, a ruthless New York hedge fund. In exchange for sniffing out information about the newly-elected progressive President Evo Morales’s plans for oil distribution, Gabriel gets $19,500 a month. The impressive salary also comes at the expense of his having to lie to the Bolivians he meets about his true purposes, in order to survive at the company. At the outset of the novel, the stakes are clear, but as Gabriel becomes more involved in his assignment, the risks become less foreseeable, the ethics stickier. Love, inevitably, enters and complicates things, when Gabriel becomes involved with Lenka, Evo’s press secretary: the woman he cares for most is the person to whom revealing his secret would be most dangerous.

The very premise of A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism is a house of cards; we are aware of this as we clench our teeth and wait for Gabriel to make a false move, blow his cover, and the disaster which will inevitably follow. As the situation grows more immediate and more dire, so, too, do the emotional stakes; the climax approaches with the urgency of a political thriller, but their results resonate with the weight of a tragedy. This is Mountford’s triumph: he has created a commentary on contemporary economics that is as moving and genuine as it is biting and satirical.

As if the logistical demands of Gabriel’s assignment weren’t complicated enough, he must constantly wrestle with the morality of his chosen path. He is sworn to secrecy, for example, about the circumstances surrounding the fund’s unusually high profits following September 11, 2001, when his boss, fund manager Priya Singh, began setting up hedges against the subsequent crash as soon as the first plane hit. Gabriel does not quite share Priya’s indifference to the unfortunate intersection of moral irresponsibility and the business of making money, but he is awed by its power; his interpretation of such aggressive ambition is that “entire nations could, it turned out, be brought to their knee by the collective whim of a few dozen math whizzes in monochromatic cubicles in lower Manhattan.”

Gabriel’s complexity, and his relatability, lies in his resistance to simply aspiring to become one of those math whizzes. He is open about his attraction to money, but strives to rationalize it away. The real goal, he tells Lenka, is to make enough in a short amount of time that he doesn’t have to bother himself with the drudgery of work anymore and can focus on life’s more rewarding endeavors. Earlier, however, he laments the fate of being broke in New York, where “demonstrations, overt and implied, of the advantages of having heaps of money were so common that they ceased to register” -- this suggests a less pure motive, as does his discomfort with greed being the “most uniformly maligned” of the seven deadly sins. The more Gabriel defends his ambitions to himself, the more it seems that he is seeking forgiveness for them. Presumably, Mountford suggests, if the book were told from Priya’s point of view, we might find similar contradictions. Such in-depth analysis of the motives of six-figure earners seems like new territory; Mountford’s willingness to allow Gabriel to live in the gray area between what we would more commonly regard as pure altruism and pure evil is part of what makes us so invested in the decision he will ultimately make -- can he survive in the gray area, we wonder, or is he compelled to choose one path over the other?

The conundrum is illustrated quite literally in the form of Gabriel’s mother, a college professor and dyed-in-the-wool leftist who sees organizations like Calloway as the devil incarnate. When Gabriel deceives his mother, as with Lenka, there is more at stake than his professional future, and yet another layer of moral complexity is added to the mix: what are our duties to our loved ones, when they conflict with our political convictions? In the book’s heartbreaking final chapters, Mountford poses the question in a new way: is it a greater sin to side with evil, or to grow so impassioned against it that we ignore the responsibilities of unconditional love?

These questions are conspicuously absent from most modern fiction, and Mountford’s honest and carefully wrought meditation on the implications of wealth and those who pursue it fills that gap. A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism will be remembered as a touchstone work of the Era of Twenty-First Century Economic Crises.

Click here for the accompanying piece, an interview with the author, Peter Mountford: http://www.bookslut.com/features/2011...(less)

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Sep 18, 2011 Pamela Pickering rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

If I had rated this book immediately after I read it I would have given it 4 stars. It's been a week later, and the more time that has passed the more I've been thinking about it. Because it has made a long lasting impression on me I have to increase my rating to 5.

The book is well written, intellectual, and thoughtful and it will cause the reader several moments to pause and to examine our own lives. This passage made a big impression on me. Though he didn't have the words for it yet, he woul...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Julia rated it 5 of 5 stars

There is something about picking up a book I don't know anything about and finding it resonates with me. This is a book like that. It's set in La Paz, Bolivia, a city I once spent a week visiting. Mountford describes this city exactly as I experienced it as an American traveler. The main character lives in a hotel room near where my friends live there, and he walks streets I walked and visits cafes I visited there. And he experiences them so similarly to the way I felt about them that it's a lit...more

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Aug 26, 2011 melissa/missy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I cruised through this book and I've been thinking about it a lot since I finished it. It's like a modernized Waiting for the Barbarians, but in reverse. I simultaneously love and am depressed by what Mountford has to say about globalized capitalism... and from a craft point of view, this novel did a fine job of creating a genuinely unlikeable narrator and still making me care about what happens to him. (I'm struggling with this on a project of my own so I took lots of notes on this point.)

Nat K...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Adrian Mendoza rated it 4 of 5 stars

The financial jargon and historical references may alienate some readers, but this book is more than a formulaic attempt at imaginative non-fiction. Mountford introduces characters that understand that risk and entropy are at the forefront of everything society holds dear, and that your salary and your relationships have the quality of transactions recorded and scrutinized as a means of mental exercise.

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Aug 18, 2011 Murray Aldrich rated it 4 of 5 stars

I cared about the protaganist but also wanted to see him get his come-uppance for being the shit he was. The book takes place in La Paz Bolivia, not a common locale for novels, and because of this, there is a specialness to the narrative as the reader gets a picture painted of a classic 3rd world capital with all its beauty and warts exposed. Excellent read, highly recommended

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About Peter Mountford

After graduating from Pitzer College with a degree in international relations, Peter Mountford lived in Ecuador where he worked for a non-profit think tank, which briefly operated a hedge fund -- inspiration for his debut novel, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism.

An avid traveler, Mountford has lived in Washington, D.C., New York, and Los Angeles, as well as Scotland, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, and...more

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