Economic promiscuity

For a decade she worked in the financial heart of the UK, becoming the first woman to be made a managing director at Morgan Stanley. There she claims she learned everything she needed to know about human nature, an education in trust, fear, and greed which she later supplemented with a PhD in Critical and Creative Writing.

Both sides of Campbell are on show in the Orange Prize long-listed On the Floor. The novel follows 28-year-old Geri Molloy across the financial markets of London and Hong Kong during the early 1990s, an evocative portrayal of wildly amoral economic promiscuity which never shies away from the toll such a lifestyle takes on the protagonist. Indeed, Geri manages to make it home only once in the course of the entire book.

Don’t be too sympathetic mind, for in Campbell’s most artistically profitable decision here, Geri is a truly horrible creation. The young Dubliner treats other female traders with open disrespect. She exploits people and takes risks with what she considers “not really anybody’s money”. She causes the reader to question her behaviour; does it result from the stresses involved in big-bucks banking or has it to do with Geri’s efforts to prove herself in an overwhelmingly macho workplace?

If the novel has a shortcoming it is that, for the most part, the secondary characters are stock — certainly the bitter nerd, the sleazy financier, and so on are recognisable figures — however Campbell displays an innate understanding that writing is all about balance. Her prose combines broad commercial fiction tropes with the poise of literary writing, bursts of beautiful imagery or observations undercut by vulgarity, often to hilarious effect.

That said, the book’s humour is bleak, serving to highlight Geri’s increasingly uncontrolled depression and tendency towards alcohol dependency. At her weakest she becomes involved in a quasi-masochistic relationship with a reclusive Hong Kong client, as much a noose around her neck as it is an opportunity for a fresh beginnings.

Part thriller, part feminist rallying call, On the Floor is a taunt and expertly paced novel. Campbell’s use of jargon only adds to its realism and serves to locate her characters’ actions in the trading scenes somewhere between professionalism and desperation, like parts of a war novel re-imagined with spreadsheets. It is perhaps no surprise so to find that the 1990/1991 Persian Gulf hostilities provide much of the backdrop as the story progresses. After all, On the Floor’s protagonist is a woman in conflict; a compelling anti-heroine at war with the system, with those around her, and, with herself.