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Graveyards of the Banks

(I did it for the money #1)

Nyla Nox (Goodreads Author)

3.92 · Rating details · 24 ratings · 14 reviews

'Graveyards of the Banks' is a haunting trilogy about Nyla's journey through the gothic maze of the Most Successful Bank in the Universe in London. A group of jobless humanities graduates abandon all hope and enter the Third Basement for a life on the graveyard shift, a toxic bubble of bitches and bullies where the Bank conducts human experiments to select the Fittest to R 'Graveyards of the Banks' is a haunting trilogy about Nyla's journey through the gothic maze of the Most Successful Bank in the Universe in London. A group of jobless humanities graduates abandon all hope and enter the Third Basement for a life on the graveyard shift, a toxic bubble of bitches and bullies where the Bank conducts human experiments to select the Fittest to Rule.
Author Nyla Nox worked on that night shift herself for seven years, treated by the Bank as the lowest of the low, hidden away in the Building Without A Name, right in the heart of one of the world's most powerful institutions in the City of London. Her voice is still unheard, the story of her hidden tribe is still untold.
Volume 1: I did it for the money.
How does it feel when you spend night after night in an iron chair with no toilet breaks and fear of being fired at the end of your shift? Hundreds of bankers roam the notorious Seventh Floor of the Bank with its filthy kitchen and flea infested carpets, forced to fight each other for survival, deliberately kept in a state of anger and frustration by their superiors who are grooming them for ruthless leadership (and the big money). Their shouting resembles constant gunfire. Predators to a man, and Nyla is their prey. But almost all of them will fail.
How do you live, how do you love?
Can confident Peter, who kisses Nyla in Cobblemaker’s Lane, fulfill his dreams of leaving for a Better World? How far will shift leaders Claire and Ethan, who rule the graveyard with absolute power (no breaks, no backtalk - in fact, no talking at all - and only one ear phone in!) go to prove their supremacy? And what about the inscrutable bank-wide institution of S&I whose representative survey the Center on their elevated platform, forcing Nyla nightly to recite her mistakes in public before she is sent home without pay?
After a life time frittered away in the unprofitable humanities, Nyla needs the money. And as hope and dignity are stripped away, night after gruelling night, a mental fog descends on her. Is there even a world left outside the Most Successful Bank in the Universe?
And how can you find sleep in the day time while the Monsters are Arising? ...more

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Kindle Edition, 176 pages

Published March 6th 2015 by Athens Publishers (first published March 2nd 2015)

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May 01, 2015 Nyla Nox rated it it was amazing · (Review from the author)

I wrote this book because nobody is telling the true story of what happens inside The Most Successful Bank in the Universe.
Bankers have their own agenda, and journalists are outsiders - very few have ever been inside the building.
My experience on the graveyard shift (midnight to 8AM) in the graphics center was harrowing and life changing. The working conditions and the Social Darwinist ideology of 'leadership' are ongoing and largely unknown.
In my job, I was the ultimate insider, I saw more secr ...more

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Mar 09, 2015 Elaine rated it it was amazing

As an industry insider, working in London, I totally "felt" this book. Not only could I relate to the extreme corporate set-up, the human interactions between employees and managers, and the atmosphere around the historic City itself, but the almost solitary survival of an individual in London and the glimpses of worthwhile aspirations kept me moving forward. I read the book in one sitting! And I have every intention of ordering the next two parts of this trilogy as soon as they are published. ...more

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Mar 07, 2015 Intensebanker rated it it was amazing

If you really want to know what goes on inside the Big Banks, here’s the one for you.
Unlike most books about investment banking, it gives the real, gritty, unvarnished view of a long term insider from what must surely be one of the Top 5 banks (Nox calls it ‘The Most Successful Bank in the Universe’ and personally I’m inclined to guess that this may well be the simple truth… but she doesn’t reveal the name).
If you have not worked at one of those banks yourself, ‘Graveyards of the Banks’ will sh ...more

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Mar 13, 2015 Carola Siekmann rated it it was amazing

Nyla Nox stumbles into a foreign world. Fate has brought her there. She is an anthropologist, but this strange culture is not the object of a research project. She is there to struggle and survive.

She enters through a small door behind a medieval graveyard in the city of London and finds herself inside the heart of the banking universe, inside the mightiest bank of them all. Nyla knows nothing about the bizarre rituals and cruelties she is about to encounter. And so she is innocent enough to see Nyla Nox stumbles into a foreign world. Fate has brought her there. She is an anthropologist, but this strange culture is not the object of a research project. She is there to struggle and survive.

She enters through a small door behind a medieval graveyard in the city of London and finds herself inside the heart of the banking universe, inside the mightiest bank of them all. Nyla knows nothing about the bizarre rituals and cruelties she is about to encounter. And so she is innocent enough to see what is really going on there. In a way, Nyla is still following her vocation: she studies the disturbing culture that she discovers within the vast, chaotic floors of the bank's building. What happens inside is a secret, nobody is even allowed to take pictures of the offices. The bank shows a smooth, glittering surface to the people that don't work there. To those inside, the bank shows quite another face.

The bank's inner universe is cruel, brutal, and sinister. There are billions of rules, to be bent and used against you at any moment. You are never secure. Within the next minute you can be shouted at, bullied, humiliated, or even sacked. Nyla experiences a culture that is built on abuse and fear. She observes how she herself inevitably changes while enduring this regime. But she stays on and stubbornly tries to survive with her soul intact.

‘I did it for the money’ is the first book of a series. In this volume, Nyla enters the black heart of the greatest bank of all and begins to grasp the rules. Through her eyes we get a first impression of the things that go on there. Things that we are not supposed to observe. Working on the “graveyard shift” in the middle of the night and at the bottom of the hierarchy, Nyla is invisible to the management. They don't suspect that people from below can have a perspective at all. And so, Nyla can look beneath the surface, like the mice that live in the bank's hollow walls and run across the work floors at night.

Nyla Nox leads us to dark places, we explore bitter truths about the world we live in, and we feel the agony and despair of human beings forced to survive in cruel circumstances. Nyla describes the banking world in concise and precise language. She takes us close to her perceptive protagonist. Some scenes she witnesses are very sad and vicious. But Nyla has the gift to lead us through the darkness with her clear voice. Her strong and elegant prose is a pleasure to read. Therefore, we follow her willingly through the night and she even makes us laugh at the irony of life. This is a brave book, but it is also beautifully written. You may cry, but you will nevertheless enjoy following Nyla through the bank's internal wilderness. I read the book in one go and I am waiting for the next volume.
...more

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May 04, 2015 Endlessreadingprincess rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literature

If Cassandra lived in London and worked deep inside 'The Most Successful Bank in the Universe' (Nox's mantra-like repeated phrase), this is the book she would write. Would anyone believe her?
Nox falls into a dirty, secret world at the heart of global finance and becomes an accidental witness to a rottenness beyond most people's belief. With a failed career in anthropology, she can not find her way out again.
Nox is not a banker, she is a minimum hour contractor who can be fired overnight. She sp ...more

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Mar 31, 2015 Ellen Bard rated it it was amazing

This is an unusual piece of literature in that it’s about work; there are surprisingly few of these out there. Despite the fact work makes up a huge amount of our daily lives, it’s hard to write engagingly about the topic (notable exceptions are the police force and other more ‘exciting’ professions).

This is about a toxic workplace, ‘the most successful bank in the universe’ (draw your own conclusions). It’s a look at a micro environment of the graveyard shift in a graphics centre, which at the ...more

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May 01, 2015 Karen Schur-Narula rated it it was amazing

A bank next to a graveyard. What could be the connection? In this first volume of the trilogy of novels Graveyards of the Banks, the valiant Nyla Nox shrouds them together in ways that are unexpected, absorbing, and even deliciously amusing. She takes what could (and must often) have been an unpleasantly stressful and horrible working environment—graveyard shift in the graphics department of a bank—and turns it into the subject of an almost anthropological study of a cold space. Survival of the ...more

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Apr 09, 2015 Tracey Martin rated it it was amazing

It is notoriously difficult to write interestingly about work - especially the work that most people do sitting in front of their computer screens all day - or in Nyla's case, all night. Most authors avoid it. But Nyla has managed to do this magnificently - her account is gripping and thoroughly readable. She cleverly weaves her own experience with reflections on the anthropological and political implications of the work she is doing. The book is thoroughly topical and yet another reminder of wh ...more

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Mar 15, 2015 Samruddhi rated it liked it

well, there are parts here that make your blood run cold!

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Jan 25, 2018 L. S. rated it really liked it

I think this could be classified as well-done satire against the corporate world.

Nyla’s endurance of rude beratings and subpar working conditions is one I think many of us can relate to. Having to budget things so close you’re not sure if you’ll eat next week, you’ll take any job you can get, right? Especially if it’s at The Most Successful Bank in the Universe—that name couldn’t possibly indicate anything sinister, could it?

Some of the representations of corporate stereotypes sat right between ...more

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Dec 27, 2015 Olga Miret rated it really liked it

I am reviewing this book as part of the Lit World Interviews review team and was offered a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Nyla, the protagonist of this novel-cum-memoir (the author is also called Nyla and in the description of the book she explains the narration is born of her personal experience working for a bank, which although it remains nameless, it’s ‘the Most Successful Bank in the Universe’) works for the department preparing the publications that seemingly are the only visi I am reviewing this book as part of the Lit World Interviews review team and was offered a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
Nyla, the protagonist of this novel-cum-memoir (the author is also called Nyla and in the description of the book she explains the narration is born of her personal experience working for a bank, which although it remains nameless, it’s ‘the Most Successful Bank in the Universe’) works for the department preparing the publications that seemingly are the only visible output the bank produces. These always show predictions of growth for their clients, although as she discovers, such predictions are based on no real data. It’s a con but it must look good.
We only know the basics about the protagonist, who is an anthropology graduate and after years of trying to make a living out of her vocation is close to destitution (in fact at the beginning of the novel, when she’s going to undertake the selection test to get the job that will occupy the rest of the book, she only has £3 in her pocket). We know she lives in a bedsit, but nothing about her personal life, family or relationships. She talks about her love of studying, books, Philosophy, and the first person narration puts the reader inside her head, and we suffer with her the claustrophobia, the harassment, the bullying, and the minor joys (very minimal) she experiences. It does not make for easy reading, let me tell you.
Nyla is very insightful, both about the world and society around her (and she offers great anthropological, sociological and political insights, including how this bank’s behaviour towards his employees is only different in style rather to historical fascist regimes, even if they prefer to see it as social Darwinism) and about herself. She observes others, she tries to study ways of surviving (she’s doing it for the money, she keeps telling herself, to try and get to ‘a better place’), and she knows she is no better than others. Her comments about becoming the witch bitch reminded me of an article I read years back by Barbara Creed about Alien and what she called ‘the monstrous feminine’. Oh yes, she can be scary, but she’s strong.
There are lighter moments, like her songs dedicated to the sweets machine (and although she doesn’t name them, we know them) but these get swallowed up by the soul-destroying routine of working at the bank.
The bank (and the author’s descriptions of the place and the situation brought to my mind not only Kafka and Orwell but also the movie Brazil) is next door to an old graveyard where the protagonist spends some of her waiting time and this London graveyard is the perfect backdrop to the action and a mirror image of the institution, only the graveyard doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t (and seems more welcoming). Like the air conditioning system, filled with nobody knows what, and a nest of corruption and sickness, the whole empire seems to be a bomb ticking. Like Nyla, who fantasises about being sacked, but worries about how she’d manage, we want to see the place collapse but don’t want Nyla to go under. The ending of this first book in the series is a cliffhanger for what might come when Monsters Arise.
This is a fascinating book, a very subjective experience for the reader, but not a novel with a plot full of action. We get to know the inside of the character’s mind but not her life. I don’t think it’s a book for everybody but it’s a scary look into a world some might have suspected existed, but not quite like this. If you want to know more about investment banking from a totally unique perspective, and you dare, go for it.
...more

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Mar 19, 2016 Ruth B rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2016

Rating: 2.5 stars

"Graveyards of the banks' is an intelligent story with a loud message against the foundations of the system we live in. However, somewhere along the story I got lost and couldn't enjoy the book as much as I would have liked.

Let me summary the story. Nina is an anthropologist who is forced to work the night shift in a cold and strange place. She will suffer the consequences of working at night when the rest of the world is sleeping, in a place where human interactions are ruled ...more

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Aug 27, 2015 Gerda rated it it was amazing

Great read, page turner, well executed

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Feb 11, 2015 Morgan Pryce rated it it was amazing

Scary and bone-chilling. For a work of fiction it reads darn realistic!

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Making Connections: 4179. - GRAVEYARDS OF THE BANKS by Nyla Nox	1	13	Jan 02, 2016 07:17AM
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About Nyla Nox

Nyla Nox

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2015: Graveyards of the Banks, I did it for the money (#1)
2015: Graveyards of the Banks, Monsters Arising (#2)
2013: The Guardian, Voices of Finance. Interview and article: http://bit.ly/1uWBYJ9
2013: BBC Radio Four, interview
2013: 'The green shadow', long novella in 'The Irony of Survival', Zharmae Press
2012: ‘The Widow’s Man’, story in ‘Thrones of Desire’, Cleis Press, picked up by 6 major US bo ...more