Banker's Holiday
A Novel of Fiscal Irregularity
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Narrated by:
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Boyd Barrett
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By:
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Gary Clemenceau
About this listen
From the first puzzling sentence, Banker's Holiday—a euphemism for a federal bank closure—conjures the bleak and humorous world of Cincinnatus Stillman Fuller, a billionaire financier who suffers a breakdown in the middle of a Monday morning staff meeting.
Fuller comes to the sudden, disturbing realization that his "brooding, luxurious zombies, otherwise known as senior management" have become just that, and that he must either escape, or become one of them.
Fuller flees the discorporate horror, disguises himself as a janitor, and heads crosscountry in an old pick-up to an odd Shangri-la in Upstate NY. But will he escape the bizarre phantasms that continue to dog him? And can anyone dispel a thousand-foot Nixon?
Part satirical fantasia, part corporate fantasy and horror, Gary Clemenceau's singular debut novel—UNEXPURGATED FOR THE FIRST TIME—illustrates Capitalism's mid-life crisis, and offers a unique solution to the problem of being human in an increasingly inhuman world.
©2006, 2025 Gary Clemenceau (P)2025 Gary ClemenceauListener received this title free
Banker's Holiday is the kind of satirical fever dream that makes you laugh, blink, and then quietly wonder if you should be laughing at all. Yep. From that first puzzling sentence, Gary Clemenceau drops you into the head of Cincinnatus Stillman Fuller, a billionaire financier who is mid meeting when the whole corporate pageant snaps out of focus and senior management starts to look less like people and more like the walking dead.
The setup is wonderfully clear even as the world gets stranger. Fuller runs, not just from his office but from the version of himself that built it, and the book follows him as he slips into disguise and hits the road, chasing a different kind of life. Eventually he lands in Haughland's Mill, where the locals and their rhythms feel like an offbeat refuge, and where characters like Gwen and Ms. Berry give the story a human pulse in the middle of all that phantasmagoria.
What worked for me is the voice. It is sharp, funny, and oddly tender, you know? Clemenceau can skewer corporate language and money worship in one paragraph, then pivot into something almost wistful about being alive and wanting out. The imagery is also a doozy, in the best way. There are scenes that feel like corporate horror, scenes that feel like surreal fantasy, and then this gigantic Richard Milhouse Nixon presence stomping into the landscape like a nightmare you cannot quite shake. Haha. I caught myself laughing at lines that felt uncomfortably true.
Sigh. My main struggle was that the book sometimes leans so hard into its riffs that I lost the thread of where we were emotionally. The pacing can wander, and the dream logic is not always the easiest to hold onto, especially if you are someone who likes neat cause and effect. I also found myself wishing a few of the secondary figures were given just a touch more space to breathe, because when the book slows down, it is genuinely affecting.
Still, I kept turning pages because the satire has bite and the book has heart underneath the weirdness. If you want a straightforward plot, this might frustrate you. If you want a strange, bleakly hilarious meditation on work, power, and the escape fantasy we all toy with, it is absolutely worth the trip.
Satirical fever dream
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