Stephanie Clifford (1)

A fall from grace after achieving rarified social status under false pretenses is a familiar story (think Edith Wharton). This one occurs, interestingly enough, immediately before the financial crash of 2008. Evelyn, relatively unskilled after completing prep school and college, takes a job at a website designed to exclude anyone but scions of the 1%. In pursuit of new clients, she latches on to a repulsive wealthy daughter and loses all sense. At the beginning of the novel, she is snarking show more fiercely about these selfsame shallow upper class Paris Hilton types, but then she succumbs, although she cannot hope to remain on the same bridle path due to lack of funds. Her comeuppance, when it arrives, is harsh, but there's still some humor to be wrung from it, which is why I enjoyed this novel so much. show less

I love the cover of Everybody Rise. So much so that I even bought a pair of chandelier style earrings after seeing the cover (now you know just how shallow I am…and possibly how fitting this book really is! I should add that the earrings were from H&M – the cost of a cup of coffee. I’m not spending beyond my means unlike our heroine…) Before I get completely off track, I just have to say that Everybody Rise is a must read. Not for the summer, not for the winter, just full stop. show more It’s a wonderful tale of semi-modern New York (2006) that discusses class and wealth in ways not seen since Edith Wharton and F.Scott Fitzgerald. It’s a fun but cautionary tale, yet it’s never boring.

The story is about Evelyn, a young lady trying to make it in New York City. Her mother Barbara is a shameless social climber, sending Evelyn to the ‘right’ schools and berating her for not being married at 26. The story opens at a high school reunion (you have all my sympathy Evelyn). Evelyn has a new job at the start up People Like Us, which is a kind of Facebook meets Trip Advisor/Makeup Alley/Zomato for the moneyed crowd. She’s the membership advisor and she’s determined to get the crème de la crème of young New York society to join. To do that, she has to do some serious social climbing herself (even though Evelyn has always thought her mother’s attempts ridiculous).

Rising above the mainstream to the playpens of the rich and idle isn’t easy when you have to work for your money. Evelyn soon discovers running with the rich requires serious effort, money and spinning an intricate pack of lies. Meanwhile, her family is in trouble and her old friends are disgusted at the trouble she’s in. (For all her education, Evelyn still believes stuffing credit card bills in a drawer makes them go away). Then everything spirals out of control and Evelyn’s downfall is as swift as her rise. What will she do?

The story, although an old one, is brilliantly told. Clifford creates a world that you can’t help but be sucked into. It’s fast, flash and glamourous – who doesn’t want to hear about exclusive parties, fantastic weekends away and gorgeous fashion and foo? She sets up the character of Evelyn very well, encouraging the reader to like her before she becomes frankly, an utter idiot. Evelyn’s weak points are highlighted – she doesn’t feel as rich or deserving as her friends and this leads the reader to even feel a little bit sorry for her as she struggles to keep up with her new crowd. Evelyn’s downfall is something that you can’t look away from. It’s morbidly fascinating and I wondered several times how she would extricate herself from it.

When she does though, it’s somewhat of a letdown. It was all too neatly packaged for me (I swear I wouldn’t get out of a $60 000-odd credit card bill so quickly). I don’t know if I was secretly hoping for it all to be a terrible mess, as payback for the horrible person Evelyn had become or if I’d become used to the crazy things Evelyn was doing. The ending is somewhat redeeming as the Evelyn we once knew makes an appearance. Clifford has the ability to tell a cautionary tale with wit and wisdom in the modern era and make it a compulsive read. I adored it. I’d happily read anything she wrote!

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the eARC. My review is honest.

http://samstillreading.wordpress.com show less

This wasn't bad at all, but it also wasn't super great. It needed to be about 75 pages shorter -- there was just so much tension and watching the main character make terrible decisions, and I honestly had to skim some of that when it just got to much to bear. But I liked it, despite the fact that I don't think people like this exist in real life. They better not. What a bore they must be.

Evelyn Beegan, laid off by the publisher from her textbook marketing job, is now soliciting members for People Like Us, a quasi-Facebook type website designed for the ultra-rich. The rarified world of the social elite beckons Evelyn, who feels she has always been on the outside looking in, even at Sheffield Academy, the fancy prep school she attended. But, by using those prep school connections, Evelyn manages, by virtue of deceit and feigning social status, to infiltrate the ranks of the show more super-rich. Her actions set her up for the inevitable fall; the humiliation of discovery hovers but rationalizing her behavior and doing whatever she deems necessary to prove she belongs keeps Evelyn from realizing it.

There’s nothing particularly likable about Evelyn and many of the choices she makes are truly cringe-worthy. As a result, with nothing fresh or innovative about this often-told story, readers may experience a bit of schadenfreude at her expense.

The narrative is well-written, sometimes mesmerizing, and often touchingly eloquent, but the decidedly familiar morality tale it conveys will have readers easily predicting the denouement long before the final pages are reached. show less