The worlds of banking and literature seldom meet, and probably for good reason. There’s not much drama to be found in the facts and figures of the financial district. Or is there?

Bank is the debut novel from David Bledin, a 24-year-old Toronto-born economic consultant now working in Washington, D.C. It tells the story of a young financial analyst in an unidentifiable city struggling to survive at a nameless bank that combines the worst aspects of a Dickensian factory and a contemporary cubicle farm – abusive bosses, long hours, and mind-numbing work.

Bledin has crafted a serviceable novel here, filled with moments of corporate gallows humour, gut-churning depictions of the life of a young wage slave, and even the heartbreaking ups and downs of a budding relationship. There are a number of clichés here that are generic to the “office fiction” genre – the incompetent assistant, the last-minute pile of work, the office philanderer – but they’re mostly excusable.

Overall, Bank is an entertaining but flat read. Bledin’s characters are stereotypes, so much so that they are given nicknames instead of names. The book’s hero is known as Mumbles, a name better suited to a 1940s Dick Tracy comic strip than a novel about the trials of a young banker. He’s hounded by recognizable office types such as the Sycophant, the Crazy Brit, and the Prodigal Son. Even his girlfriend is known for long stretches of the novel as The Woman with the Scarf.

This all reduces the novel to a kind of broad morality tale about the dangers of sacrificing everything for your career and a large paycheque. It’s an important lesson, but one that doesn’t need to be delivered with such heavy-handedness.