From its provocative opening sentence to its touching final pages, this novel will entertain you, inspire you, and change the way you think. A Merger of Equals is the story of Jane and Charlie and their climb up the corporate ladder. As it interweaves business-savvy information and realities with a captivating, fast-paced story and characters so real you'll want to call and ask them to meet you for coffee, A Merger of Equals demonstrates that quite a few so-called truths about work, life and love are not even close to true.
Jane is fierce, ambitious and brilliant. She’s also skeptical and sarcastic. Sure she’s going to be considered an incompetent interloper in the cozy little men’s club that is the traditional business world, she is determined to get to the top anyway, to become a leader and to change that world.
Charlie is the quintessential golden boy on the fast track to the top. He knows how to play the game, he’s charming and he’s gorgeous. He, too, is determined to succeed. He’s also determined to change some of the rules of the game.
Jane and Charlie meet when he is assigned as her mentor at the big-time investment bank where they both work. Over the next ten years, they become colleagues, then friends, partners and parents. They balance her inherent skepticism and his blithe optimism to propel themselves upward, all the while surrounded by friends and lovers, some of whom ease the climb and some of whom decidedly do not.
Jane’s female friends are outspoken, funny and smart, and each of them finds her own way to succeed. Their “girls’ club” sessions are among the highlights of the book: lusty, razor-sharp and right on the money. Charlie’s male friends run the gamut from those sensitive enough to question their own approaches to success to those who wonder why things need to change at all. Jane and Charlie also have romantic relationships with other people before they find one another—and the way they ultimately do come together is innovative and unusual.
As it unfolds, A Merger of Equals recreates the business world in all its complacent, illogical, sexist glory and reveals how very differently men and women experience ambition, work, sex, love and life. Readers and reviewers have called it "stunning," "impossible to put down," "densely packed with business advice," and "one of the most enlightening and true works of fiction about corporate life and love."
