Mergers & Acquisitions

By: Dana Vachon

Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne

Tommy Quinn has just landed the job of his dreams as an investment banker at J. S. Spenser, as well as the perfect girl, Frances Sloan, the daughter of one of New York's oldest moneyed families. As he travels from the most exclusive ballrooms to the stuffiest boardrooms, from the golf links to the bedrooms of Park Avenue - and from the debauched yacht of a Mexican billionaire to the Ritalin-strewn dorm room of his younger brother - he finds that the job and the girl are not what they once seemed.

Set against the backdrop of money, lust, power, corruption, cynicism, energy, and excitement that is Wall Street, Dana Vachon's debut is suffused with an authenticity that only an author who lives in that world can provide. With Mergers & Acquisitions, he delivers a stylish and hilarious tale of the lives and loves of well-to-do young Manhattanites in their first year on Wall Street.

Sharp, fast-paced, and bitingly witty, Mergers & Acquisitions is a compulsively listenable story of New York's young, ambitious, and wealthy that is destined to become one of the year's most buzzed-about debuts.

©2007 Dana Vachon (P)2007 Penguin Audio, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., and Books on Tape. All rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"Dana Vachon exposes the carnal and financial lusts of his generation's privileged and ambitious as few others have in recent years. And he knows his Ferragamos from his Dolce & Gabbanas, which is refreshing for a guy." (Candace Bushnell)
"I've always maintained that what we know as 'the 80s' never really ended, and Mergers & Acquisitions proves the point in spades. A Bright Lights, Big City for the generation born around the time that Bright Lights, Big City came out, Mergers & Acquisitions is a coming-of-age novel with a very nice balance of heartfelt insight and acid satire - including one of the funniest jerks I've ever encountered (in fiction)." (Kurt Andersen)

Good Story

If you could sum up Mergers & Acquisitions in three words, what would they be?

captivating interesting sweet

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

It should not end so soon, was hoping there would be more.

What about Kirby Heyborne’s performance did you like?

Kirby was awesome. Sound like a real radio-play artist. Keeps the listener engaged.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Not mergers and acquisitions

Any additional comments?

Overall a good story.

Positives
Interesting account of the Ibank world (Liar's Poker-ish)
The active sequences were captivating

Negatives
Detailed description of parties and restaurant visits were a bit too much for me

Its Satire, Folks

This book is a wonderful piece of satire. Almost every character, starting with the narrator, is forgetable and absurd. The story barely hangs together, but it grows on you as you go along.

View the title as meaning about relationships, rather than about finance (though the narrator is a fledgling investment banker).

Richard Thorn is a hoot. The section with the couple in the restaurant is memorable. So is the gala in the MOMA garden. So is the scene on Carlos Slim's yacht, followed by the encounter with "Jesus" the park ranger.

Get the idea? Its a satire, and worth a listen.

Don't waste your time

This book was awful, one of the rare few that I did not bother to finish. If you are expecting an focused financial-themed book along the lines of books by Joseph Finder, keep looking. The shallowness of the characters is tiresome and quite uninteresting. The Roger Thorne character is especially annoying and unrealistic (I hope!) with his constant vapid pronouncements on various "babes." The artist character also comes across as a caricature. Overall, the plot seemed to lack direction and the book meandered along. As a previous reviewer commented, if you are wondering at the midway point if the book will get better, he is right - it doesn't.

Not what it seems

I purchased this book under the Business section & merger & acquisition.

It urns out to be a lame story of an investment banker.

Not recommended if you’re looking for a serious business book.

What a waste of credit!!!

bad narrator and terrible book

book had nothing to do mergers and aquisitions. Just a boring sorry. Narrator should not be narrating books.

Waste of time and Money

This book has nothing to do with mergers and acquisitions...nor with the investment banking culture. The title is grossly misleading. The book is a poor quality attempt to create an erotica story. Not worth the money, but more important not worth your time..if what you are seeking is some insight into the M&A world.

As shallow as his characters

If you are looking for a fast paced book about the world of finance... look elsewhere. If you are looking for a book that tries to show how shallow and unlikable the privledged are and then becomes that very goal itself, this is the book for you. Mergers and Acquisitions tries to be a cross between John Irving and Richard Heller, creating one "outrageous" character and scenario after another to try to entertain and shock the reader. Instead, you plow through a maze of forgettable and unlikable characters who you hope will become more interesting, but never do. If you feel like quitting on this book when you are about 1/2 through, but feel like you need to stick with it because it might all pull together in the end and be worth the time invested in listening to the book, go ahead and quit. It doesn't and it isn't.

Stupid and unbelievable

Satire should be based on characters and situations that are exaggerations of plausible situations. This book isn't satire, it is childish fantasy. As I listened that was the main impression - the writing and situations are juvenile. One of the worst books I have purchase, if not the worst. Total waste of time.