Everybody Rise
-
-
3.0 • 7 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
EVERYBODY WANTS TO BELONG. A razor-sharp, bracing and hilarious debut novel of social climbing and the universal longing to fit in by award-winning New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford
'A juicy, scheme-filled update on Edith Wharton, and it's unputdownable.' LENA DUNHAM'S Lenny lifestyle newsletter
'Everybody Rise is on our must-read list. Her plight to find her true self has all of us rooting for Evelyn until the very last page.' OLIVIA PALERMO
'I've heard great things about EVERYBODY RISE.' CURTIS SITTENFELD
It's 2006 in the Manhattan of the young and glamorous. At 26, bright, funny and socially anxious Evelyn Beegan is determined to free herself from the social-climbing mother who propelled her through prep school and on to the Upper East Side.
Evelyn has long felt like an outsider to her privileged peers, but when she gets a job recruiting members for People Like Us, a social-network site aimed at the elite, she befriends glamorous queen bee Camilla Rutherford and steps into a promised land of private schools, regattas, second homes and the society pages.
But Evelyn soon starts lying in order to fit in. And as her lies grow while she relentlessly elbows her way up the rickety social ladder, the ground underneath her begins to give way. After every rise must there be a fall?
In the bestselling tradition of social-climbing tales told by an outsider, The Great Gatsby, The Devil Wears Prada, Prep and Gossip Girl, comes this extraordinary debut novel.
'There's little more delicious than watching an ambitious but tragically flawed protagonist brought down - especially in a designer cocktail dress. A smart tragicomedy.' WASHINGTON POST
'GOSSIP GIRL fans, rejoice! Behold the literary version of a Jenny-esque narrated story, had she met Blair and Serena in her mid-20s.' MARIE CLAIRE
'An ambitious New Yorker insinuates herself into the old guard in the years before the financial crisis. Clifford details the manners of the old-money set with a reporter's well-trained eye.' NEW YORK TIMES
'It's a fun page-turner from a New York Times reporter that lives in the world of Curtis Sittenfeld's PREP.' GWYNETH PALTROW (Goop)
'The complex relationships, authentic characters and OMG moments will continue to stick in your mind long after you put Everybody Rise down. Plus, any book that leaves us with the feeling "Whoa, our sh*t is a little more together than we thought," deserves our praise.' GLAMOUR
'A new hire for a social-networking site takes her job recruiting "the elite's elite" to extremes.' VOGUE
'A buzzy Tom Wolfe-meets-Edith Wharton novel of young Manhattan.' HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
'An intoxicating blend of class, ambition and money.' ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
'A Manhattan-set class satire with the bite to satisfy postrecession readers.' TIME MAGAZINE
'We are loving EVERYBODY RISE. It's a fantastic read!' iBOOKS
'Addictive. Think PREP meets THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA.' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
'A smart, moving tale of class, ambition and identity.' MALCOLM GLADWELL
'An intriguing look at class distinctions and social climbing, Stephanie Clifford's debut is not to be missed.' INSTYLE
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
First-time novelist Stephanie Clifford channels her experiences as a New York Times metro reporter into a hard-to-put-down novel of manners. Evelyn Beegan graduated from an elite New Hampshire boarding school, but her life as a 20-something New York City professional is more drab than razzle-dazzle. When Evelyn lands a job as the director of membership for an upper-crust Facebook called People Like Us, she makes it her mission to penetrate the lives of the rich and famous. With its cool air of detachment, Everybody Rise offers both the pleasures of voyeurism and the thrill of a cautionary tale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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. Evelyn Beegan, a new-money 26-year-old whose social-climber mother finagled her into the right prep schools, sells her soul in order to succeed in her first job at a social networking site called People Like Us. In order to win over those at the center of the young Upper East Side elite so she can use their names on the PLU site, Evelyn uses her connections from school to wheedle invitations to Adirondack camps and charity events. She spends more money than she has and lies about her own background as she claws to the top of the social heap, shedding integrity and eventually a very nice young man on her way up. Evelyn scores big when she befriends socialite Camilla Rutherford, who gives her access to her parents' friends and prestigious charity balls, until Evelyn's deception and the expense of keeping up appearances threatens to overwhelm Evelyn. While this novel displays none of the melancholy irony of the Sondheim song for which it is named, it is an amusing page-turning beach read. But if the author is trying to suggest that after 2008, class and the UES no longer hold sway, her argument is thin.
