Ride a Cockhorse

By Raymond Kennedy

Book Overview

A revolution is under way at a once sleepy New England bank. Forty-five-year-old Frances Fitzgibbons has gone from sweet-tempered loan officer to insatiable force of nature almost overnight. Suddenly she's brazenly seducing the high-school drum major, taking over her boss's office, firing anyone who crosses her, inspiring populist fervor, and publicly announcing plans to crush her local rivals en route to dominating the entire banking industry in the northeast. The terrifying new order instituted by Frankie and her offbeat goon squad (led by her devoted hairdresser and including her own son-in-law) is an awesome spectacle to behold. Brimming with snappy dialogue and gleeful obscenity, Ride a Cockhorse is a rollicking cautionary tale of small-town demagoguery that might be seen to prefigure both America's current financial woes and the rise of Sarah Palin. Frances is in any case a beautiful monster of an antiheroine--resist her at your peril!

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590174895
• ISBN13: 9781590174890
• Release Date: June 2012
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Laugh-Out Loud

A lot of books carry the claim of being laugh out loud funny. This one truly is. I was reading it on a train and several times I had to exercise personal restraint, for fear that the other co-passengers would judge me a lunatic. Some aspects of the main character's rants can get a bit repetitive, but this is a small price to pay for the many, many laughs. If the tone and humor of "A Confederacy of Dunces" is your cup of tea, you will not go wrong with this one. My only question is how some quality works like this one live in relative obscurity, while other wasteproducts get all sorts of marketing support and fly off the shelves.