Very much a first novel, could have been shorter. Charlie Wales is a young man from a middle class suburban background and the story is from his POV. He goes to Edinburgh where he falls in with a group of students from wealthy, aristocratic backgrounds and yearns to live life as they do. After leaving uni he does what so many other bright young people did at the time, he joins a boutique financial company in the City of London. It is the time of big salaries, big bonuses, flash living - they all seem to consume vast quantities of alcohol and cocaine -to sustain themselves as the banks and other finance houses suck the life out of their employees. Charlie is in love with Vero who is French and had been at Edinburgh with him, they have had an on/off emotional relationship ever since. His best friend is also in love with her. The book revolves arround the ups and downs, the break-ups and reconciliations between these three throughout the period of the economic crisis which causes the credit crunch. Charlie always intending to leave the City and do a job he considers 'worthwhile' - but when he does so, he finds he is bored and it isn't as he expected so he returns to the City again.

I can't say I really liked any of the characters particularly, but the author obviously knows what it is like to work in the City and paints a very real picture of the greed, excitement, despair and venality of people in that environment. ( )

Reading the reviews below, it seems this one is divided between those who loved it and those who hated it. I'm sorry to say I fell into the latter camp, finding the characters hugely unlikeable and the writing clunky, telling when it should be showing. The characters seem far too self-aware and announce their own quirks as part of everyday conversation, rather than letting the reader make up his or her own mind about them.

I do believe there's an interesting book to be written on the subject of the financial collapse, yet for me this wasn't it. Others appear to disagree, so read all the reviews before making up your mind... after all, what do I know? ( )

I'm not sure exactly who this book is aimed for, as the main character, Charlie, is impossible to sympathise with. A one dimensional, aspirational type who thinks the only way to financial security is to move to London and work in the city. Even though he doesn't really want to. What follows is a predictable journey into the loneliness of big city life and - of course - the impact of the economic downturn.
Instead of sympathising with him you'll find yourself thinking he gets all he deserves for being so miserable and having so little imagination he can't escape his increasingly dull life.
If you've been ground down by life in the big city you might connect with this tale, if not you'll simply find yourself asking why Charlie doesn't walk away from it all. ( )

I guess I misunderstood. When I read the description of This Bleeding City, it sounded like an fun story of fast life in the City of London, intrigue in the finance sector. I was expecting something like Grisham's The Apprentice, crooked financiers and their comeuppance.
I liked the sound of a touch of romance; a personal story, not just gritty corruption, with a naive graduate taking on the world.

That's not what it was at all. Ignoring the prologue (which caused me to spend the last 50 pages of the book wondering when we were going to catch up to that event), we are led into the world of Charlie Wales, studying at Uni and hung up about his family's lack of money and connection. He decides he wants to continue in the fast lane, make money fast and retire young. The only way to achieve this, he tells us, is to take a job in London, which he expects to hate, doing high finance, which he expects to devour his soul and leave him devoid of higher functions.

Perhaps it's me, but my sympathy is thin on the ground before the plot has had a chance to get moving. It is unclear why Charlie (and his friends) stick it out in London, continuing to despise the city and everyone they work with, spending their evenings bemoaning the reality of life in big business. His friends escape leaving him miserable and alone, about to be hit by the tidal wave of the financial crash.

There's more to it than that, of course. There's the romance angle: Vero who is not his girlfriend but sleeps with him on occasion but won't settle with him but there might be something more but he has to make more money to make her happy. To be fair to the girl, this appears to be his interpretation, not hers. Then there's the sweet girl working for a charity who sees the good in Charlie and helps him to break away from the finance world that is stealing his soul. He gets a job writing about the theatre - exactly what he wanted to do from the start. But then, that job isn't all that, and he's still not very happy, and the sweet girl is sort of boring, really, and so he throws it all away.

Another up, another down, and then we end where we started, with Charlie Wales working in the finance industry and wondering what happened to his life - except this time there's no youthful dreams to break up the dread of the office job in the finance sector.

I suppose if you want justification that London steals your soul and that city wideboys live deluded, unhappy shadows of normal life, the bleakness of this story could reassure you that your prejudices were justified.

I felt frustrated by the attitude from the start and so I fear the morality lesson was wasted on me. ( )

While this book has a few nice features - a clever title, a prologue that draws you in (though it pretty much telegraphs the whole plot of the book) it is really rather dire and a chore to read. The author seems to have taken every metaphor he could find, gilded with some extra adjectives and whacked them into his story. The plot - boy from average background sells his soul to get the finer things in life (including a girl who is 'too good for him') but discovers in the end that of course that is not really what happiness is about, after losing his way - is trite and has been done much better elsewhere. The characters feel like badly drawn stereotypes, and frankly I never really cared about any of them.
In short - this reads like a bad creative writing program output. There are some fascinating novels being published at the moment - save your precious reading time for them, don't bother with this one. ( )