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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
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| 33607003075903 | Adult Fiction | CLIFFOR | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
An instant New York Times bestseller!
Chosen as one of Summer's Best Books by People Magazine
Featured in Time Magazine's Summer Reading
Entertainment Weekly 's Summer Must List
Good Housekeeping Beach Reads Feature
"A witty tale about a high-society wannabe...Little is more delicious than watching an ambitious but tragically flawed protagonist brought down - especially in a designer cocktail dress." -The Washington Post
Everyone yearns to belong, to be part of the "in crowd," but how far are you willing to go to be accepted? In the case of bright, funny and socially ambitious Evelyn Beegan, the answer is much too far...
At 26, Evelyn is determined to carve her own path in life and free herself from the influence of her social-climbing mother, who propelled her through prep school and onto New York's glamorous Upper East Side. Evelyn has long felt like an outsider to her privileged peers, but when she gets a job at a social network aimed at the elite, she's forced to embrace them.
Recruiting new members for the site, Evelyn steps into a promised land of Adirondack camps, Newport cottages and Southampton clubs thick with socialites and Wall Streeters. Despite herself, Evelyn finds the lure of belonging intoxicating, and starts trying to pass as old money herself. When her father, a crusading class-action lawyer, is indicted for bribery, Evelyn must contend with her own family's downfall as she keeps up appearances in her new life, grasping with increasing desperation as the ground underneath her begins to give way.
People and Time Inc. are not affiliated with, and do not endorse products or services of St. Martin's Press. People's Pick Logo is a Registered Trademark of Time Inc. and is used under license.
Author Notes
STEPHANIE CLIFFORD is a Loeb Award-winning reporter at The New York Times. She grew up in Seattle and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son, and two cats.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The upstart heroine of this debut novel by New York Times reporter Clifford wages a one-woman assault on the old-money snobbery of the Upper East Side before the Wall Street stock market crash of 2008. Raised on the Eastern Shore of Maryland by a charismatic lawyer and a mother who futilely yearned to be part of "high society," Evelyn Beegan went to an elite New England boarding school and rubbed elbows with wealthy old-money families, though she was only middle-class herself. Now a job at a start-up social network for "1-percenters" requires her to worm her way into that social set-and she finds herself addicted to the heady world of debutante balls, museum benefits, and women who spend their days lunching, shopping, and going to spas. Her desperate social climbing leads her to lie outrageously about her background, and she gets deep into debt trying to keep up with the leisure class. Narrator Kellgren has a blast with the voices here-plummy Thurston Howell tones for aristocratic rich men, a bratty prep-school/Valley girl voice for a spoiled debutante, an expansive Southern accent for Evelyn's dad, and even an authentic German accent for a housekeeper. Her marvelous narration makes an entertaining listen. A St. Martin's hardcover. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Twentysomething Evelyn Beegan has just enough social-climbing bona fides (prep school, good college, a somewhat prominent attorney father, a somewhat pedigreed mother) to reach the fringes of 2006 Manhattan high society. When she lands a job with People Like Us, a start-up social media site for superrich young New Yorkers, she is charged with quickly increasing membership. She uses her school friends, her minimal connections, her quick mind, her dogged research skills, and her facility for lying to gain entry into the charity events, regattas, debuts, and stunningly excessive shopping and dining experiences that define the lives of her targets. The deeper she gets, the more she needs, and eventually she pays a price more terrible than the massive debts she runs up trying to buy her way in. -Clifford, an award-winning reporter at the New York Times, has penned either a how-to (how-don't?) manual or a cautionary tale for those seeking access to this rarefied world. VERDICT A compulsive, up-close-and-personal read about the first cracks in the greed-and-bleed U.S. economy that went flying off the rails so spectacularly a short time later. [See Prepub Alert, 2/23/15.]-Beth -Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.