Rich and Pretty
Ratings5
Average rating3.1
15
Ratings5
Average rating3.1
This irresistible debut, set in contemporary New York, provides a sharp, insightful look into how the relationship between two best friends changes when they are no longer coming of age but learning how to live adult lives. As close as sisters for twenty years, Sarah and Lauren have been together through high school and college, first jobs and first loves, the uncertainties of their twenties and the realities of their thirties. Sarah, the only child of a prominent intellectual and a socialite, works at a charity and is methodically planning her wedding. Lauren beautiful, independent, and unpredictable is single and working in publishing, deflecting her parents worries and questions about her life and future by trying not to think about it herself. Each woman envies and is horrified by particular aspects of the other's life, topics of conversation they avoid with masterful linguistic pirouettes. Once, Sarah and Lauren were inseparable; for a long a time now, they've been apart. Can two women who rarely see one other, selectively share secrets, and lead different lives still call themselves best friends? Is it their abiding connection or just force of habit that keeps them together? With impeccable style, biting humor, and a keen sense of detail, Rumaan Alam deftly explores how the attachments we form in childhood shift as we adapt to our adult lives and how the bonds of friendship endure, even when our paths diverge.
Reviews with the most likes.
Author Rumaan Alam is a homosexual writing about young female friendship being read by a hetero dad. This should not work. It reads like a Millennial version of the Neapolitan novels. God I'm not really selling this am I? But I enjoyed the read.
Sarah is the rich daughter of a Rumsfield-esque statesmen and is looking forward to getting married. Lauren is the pretty childhood friend who finds Sarah's fiancé to be boring but is tasked with maid of honour duties including the getaway bachelorette.
Nothing really happens though. There's no dead bridesmaid at the bachelorette, no last minute infidelities, dying parent, financial meltdown. It's just the ups and downs of two lifelong female friends as they navigate those tiny things we all do with the friends we've developed a shorthand with. The knowledge of how arguments will grow and subside. The nostalgia of a friendship. At 20 remembering being excited 16 year olds. At 24 remembering being college freshmen. That relationship you really wished could have worked out for your friend.
And then seeing how it's going to change yet again with one of you marrying. The inevitable kids, the changing priorities. It's a quiet book filled with insightful tiny moments.
