The Mark and the Void

Counterintuitive. By the time I began to feel that Paul Murray’s novel titled, The Mark and the Void, was quite a bit too long, I was almost in the home stretch, so I finished reading it. For the first two hundred pages or so, I was delighted and entertained by this comic romp about the serious matters of the global financial crisis and life inside one of the big banks. Protagonist Claude Martingale works in Dublin for a bank with the funny name Bank of Torabundo that pursues a strategy that is intentionally counterintuitive. Packed with deceptions of all sorts, there’s a love story here, a satire on banking and the story of an Everyman who led me to root for him. Murray is a fine writer, and his skilled storytelling compelled me to overlook some rocky spots, and stay with him to the end as I was enchanted by this charming and satirical novel. Rating: Four-star (I like it) Click here to purchase The Mark and the Void from amazon.com.