Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy: A Novel [Hardcover]

Doug Stumpf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2007

Brazilian-born Gil is trying to find the American Dream. In the meantime, he polishes the shoes of the superrich and powerful on Wall Street—high-rolling traders as uninhibited as they are ruthless. Gil sees things as few other people do—from the ground up—and his perspective on the day-to-day insanity of the trading floor is priceless. But this fly on the wall overhears one or two things that maybe he shouldn't. And when a Glossy magazine journalist, desperate for a big break, persuades him to be an undercover source for what may be the biggest insider trading scam in Wall Street history, Gil is catapulted into a danger zone darker than anything he or the journalist could have imagined.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Wall Street comedy of manners by Vanity Fair deputy editor Stumpf, this fast-paced debut novel updates The Bonfire of the Vanities. Gregarious young Brazilian émigré Aguilar Gil Benicio shines shoes at a prominent firm, where his customer base is almost entirely white, male and exorbitantly pampered: This traders make more money than movie stars, Gil notes. When a janitor friend is unjustly fired, Gil relates the details to Glossy magazine writer Greg Waggoner, who suspects the incident masks a insider-trading scandal. The conceit of the book, in which Gil and Greg share narrating duties as they recap their effort to uncover the crime, is that the book is Greg's novel, a fictionalized version of the scoop that got away. It's a lousy setup, and vital clues that come too easily don't help. Neither do Gil's unvarnished dialect and his idolization of the traders and of Greg, who plays Henry Higgins to Gil's Eliza Doolittle. Rare indeed, too, is the female character who comes through this tale without suffering degradation or scorn. Yet the book is funny, and beneath the humor (and a lot of sex and sex talk), Stumpf takes on assimilation, class betrayal and common decency with seriousness. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

This début novel views corruption at Wall Street’s highest levels through the eyes of two outsiders. Gil, who immigrated to New York from São Paulo as a child and retains a Portuguese-flavored grammar, overhears tales of life on the trading floor while shining some of the nicest shoes in business. He absorbs the particulars of a world where jockeying banter about sex, drugs, and push-up contests is interspersed with long hours of watching numbers on a screen, and where the appeal of insider trading as a way to break the tedium becomes unignorable. Stumpf switches between Gil’s voice and that of a magazine writer in need of a big story who fastens onto him as a source. As they become entangled in mounting financial and sexual scandals, Stumpf exposes the sordidness in both the financial and the journalistic worlds.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper; First Edition edition (July 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060889535
• ISBN-13: 978-0060889531
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,335,111 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The dirty soles on Wall Street, July 9, 2007

By 

Boris Stravinsky "Boris" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy: A Novel (Hardcover)

A friend of mine gave me a copy of "Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy" after he came upon it in the bookstore. He said he couldn't put it down and I had to read it. He was right--what a fantastic read! This book has it all: a fast-moving plot full of intrigue and unexpected twists, a hilarious and original voice in Gil, the charming and unexpected hero of the story (think the kind of error-prone but rich English-as-second-language narration of Everything Is Illuminated), and subtle satire that throws the class disparities of America and the moral abandon of Wall Street into stark relief. I highly recommend to anyone looking for a quick summer read that packs a punch.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worse than waterboarding, November 14, 2007

By 

Someone Like You (New York City) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ditto all the other one-star reviewers. For those who gave it 5 stars, what are you smoking and how can I get some? This book should be standard reading for all Al Qaeda detainees--by the third Gil chapter they'll have either killed themselves or divulged any secrets they might have in order to avoid reading chapter 4. Truly amazing a) books like this get 1) read by editors, 2) accepted by editors, 3) edited by editors, 4) published by huge corporations and b) media outfits like NPR and CNBC hawked this book on-air as if it was the next Liar's Poker. David Halberstam, RIP, even blurbed it on the back cover.... Shame on him.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars What a waste of time and paper, April 19, 2008

By 

Jan R "Jan R" (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confessions of a Wall Street Shoeshine Boy: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read this book this week, and can't believe I even finished it. It was awful. I finished it because I wanted to find out what the big insider trading "secret" was , as alluded to on the flap if the book jacket. What a waste of my time as there is no big payoff in the book.

The author writes in the "voice" of Brazilian Gil, the shoeshine boy, and it is hard work to read through his dialogue. Mostly because the author cannot stay true to the voice of Gil, so it seems like a pampered white guy is writing as he thinks an uneducated Brazilian/immigrant would speak. His white-guy voice and arrogance peeps through the character of Gil by using words that Gil wouldn't use, as well as Gil's commentary on the type of shoes his customers choose.

And his sexy scenes just aren't.