Ride a Cockhorse

By Raymond Kennedy and Katherine A. Powers

    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!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781590175040

Raymond Kennedy

Raymond Kennedy (1934-2008) was born and raised in western Massachusetts. In 1982, he joined the creative writing faculty at Columbia University, where he taught until his retirement in 2006.

Reviews for Ride a Cockhorse

[viking2917_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kinda fun and kinda funny but I didn't really get it. From the blurb: "Forty-five-year-old Frances Fitzgibbons has gone from sweet-tempered loan officer to insatiable force of nature almost overnight". And she does. This was tongue in cheek or a parody of something, but a New York Review Classic? Huh? I am missing something....

[elainewatkins · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Kept waiting for it to get better but it never did, not sure why I even picked the book!