As someone who stormed through Succession, White Lotus and Big Little Lies with their jaw permanently attached to the floor, I will quite happily confess that I am a sucker for portrayals of ‘how the other half lives.’ Gossip magazines, documentaries, reality tv shows, and, of course, dark fiction: we as a society have an unquenchable thirst for lifting the lid on the lifestyles of the super wealthy, and we tend to have a particular vigour for when those super wealthy behave super appallingly.
This is exactly the theme I touch upon in my novel, Out of her Depth, in which Rachel, an unassuming girl from a nondescript London suburb, lands a Summer job in the hills of Florence, which catapults her into the orbit of a group of uber privileged young Brits who play as fast and loose with emotions as they do with money.
But what is it that draws us to these characters, and their unsavoury behaviour? For me, a large part of it is the fantasy that their lifestyle evokes. The things they can buy…the places they can go…everyone dreams about living a life where they ‘have it all,’ and the bigger and better the promise of that ‘all’ is, the more tantalising that dream becomes. But a novel about rich people going about their lives acting in an altruistic and goodly manner has no bite to it, does it? That’s no fun! Instead, we revel in their bad behaviour, reassuring ourselves that they may have money, but no manners. It allays our jealousies; reveals the seamy underbelly of a life that we had told ourselves ‘was too good to be true.’
If, like me, you revel in this moralistic take down, here are some novels that will scratch the itch…
The Talented Mr Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith
I owe a huge debt to Highsmith’s Italian-set Ripley novel, which was a major inspiration for Out of her Depth. Like my protagonist Rachel, the eponymous Tom Ripley is a ‘fish out of water,’ drawn in to the world of the capricious Dickie Greenleaf and his somewhat-girlfriend, Marge. Tom lusts after Dickie and Marge’s lifestyle…to a dark end…but by using a protagonist who only has one foot in their world, Highsmith is able to comment on their appalling antics in a way Tom himself is too blinkered to see.
The Club, by Ellery Lloyd
Husband-and-wife writing team Collette Lyons and Paul Vlitos explored the dark side of lifestyle influencers in their debut novel, People Like Her, and their follow up, The Club, delves into another area of very modern glamour: the private member’s club. Lyons drew on her own experiences working for Soho House, and the multi-narrative plot is replete with horrible people who have more money than sense. Wonderfully fun.
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Introducing another voyeur figure in Nick Carraway, F. Scott’s seminal Jazz Age tale sizzles with glamour. The parties may not stop, but Fitzgerald scratches the surface to reveal their emptiness, and in Jay Gatsby he demonstrates the truism of the expression ‘money can’t buy happiness.’
The Divines, by Ellie Eaton
As a child who devoured Enid Blyton novels, I will never say no to a boarding school tale, but Ellie Eaton’s debut novel gives the privileged experience a deeply adult insight. Dripping with the folly (and menace) of youth, The Divines explores the toxicity of female friendships, and how the choices we make as adolescents can come back to haunt us.
Our House, by Louise Candlish
The couple in Candlish’s ‘property porn’ thriller may not have the extreme wealth afforded to the others on this list, but theirs is a morality tale of the hold that having money (in this case, prime real estate) can have, and the lengths that some will go to keep it that way.
The Wife Between Us, by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
This domestic noir reads something like a modern day, reverse Rebecca. Vanessa, the jilted ex-wife of successful hedge fund manager, Richard, reminisces about the downfall of her marriage as she observes history repeating itself with his new fiancé, Emma. It’s a carefully crafted, twisty thriller in which Richard embodies the ‘all that glitters’ trope.
The Secret History, by Donna Tartt
In The Secret History, privilege takes the form of not just of wealth, but education. Much like Ripley or Gatsby’s Nick Carraway, Tartt’s protagonist Richard Papen is a voyeur, sucked into the eccentric frivolities of his elite New England college classmates, and the dark path they lead him down.
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