Everybody Rise

June 22, 2015
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.

June 15, 2015
A young woman who works at a tech startup tries to shoehorn her way into New York's high society. The most notable thing about Evelyn Beegan's life so far is that she went to Sheffield Academy, a New England boarding school where the vibe is so preppy that her social-climbing mother, Barbara, bought a used 1985 Mercedes once she realized "none of the old-money mothers would deign to drive a fresh-off-the-lot BMW like the Beegans had shown up in." (Clifford, a New York Times reporter, has a good eye for class markers.) Now Evelyn works at People Like Us, a social networking site trying to recruit "the elite's elite," and she's busy using Sheffield friends such as Preston Hacking, "a Winthrop on his mother's side," to insinuate herself into the exclusive swirl of charity balls and weekends in the Adirondacks where she can engage new members. But it's more than business to Evelyn: she genuinely admires luminaries like Camilla Rutherford, "the clear center of young New York," and concocts ever more elaborate lies about her own background in an attempt to befriend them. Hasn't Evelyn ever heard of Google? It shouldn't be hard for people to find out she was never a debutante in Baltimore, among other things. Having her father, a lawyer who specializes in suing pharmaceutical companies, indicted for bribery isn't a secret she'll be able to keep forever, either. There's been a big debate in the past few years about whether literary characters need to be likable, and of course many great books feature protagonists you wouldn't want to befriend. But Evelyn spends so much time doing such bone-headed things, and for a goal that seems so dated, that's it's hard to work up any interest in what happens to her. Clifford's debut tries to be a Bonfire of the Vanities for our time but doesn't make it.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from April 15, 2015

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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2015

A Loeb Award-winning reporter at the New York Times, Clifford turns her sharp eye on Manhattan's young and self-assuredly privileged. But Evelyn Beegan is not so self-assured or privileged; her high-aspiring mother has pushed her into a fancy prep school and equally fancy college, and now she's copped a job at a newly minted social networking site that depends on her exploiting the high-flying connections she presumably made. At a quick glance, the writing is delicious and well observed, and film rights for this debut novel have already been purchased by Fox 2000.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2015

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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 26, 2015
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.