1% Writers
March 17, 2019
A young woman from the Northeast details her life. She’s from a hardworking family of modest means. Or maybe she’s from a rich family with high expectations. Her family usually contains clueless self-involved parents, often involved in an acrimonious divorce. Sometimes there’s alcoholism and abuse as a topper.
Somehow, this young woman ends up at summer camp, a privileged island, or an elite private school. The young woman approaches this institution as an alien, painting a usually-unflattering portrait of the lifestyle of the rich and famous.
The young woman has a choice. She can either suck it up and play the game she’s being asked to play or she can rebel. What she can’t do is leave. Unlike young people in stories set in other places, there’s nowhere she can escape. The gravitational force of her elite world is too strong. She might get away for a while, but she gets sucked back in to the vapid world inhabited by elite women.
She can’t find herself. The haze of alcohol, sex, and money prevents her from learning that she is a person whose soul has worth. The hypocrisy that surrounds her keeps her off-balance. She can’t trust her own inner compass because her external guides all point her in the wrong direction.
Occasionally, these books take you on a journey worth your time. Mostly, though, they just paddle around the elite pool, toying with big issues but not honestly engaging with them. They toss in some superfluous drama to keep the story moving.
Often, when I finish these books, I feel like I’ve just consumed a mental nothingburger. They leave no impact. They don’t change my life. They don’t make me think. They don’t help me solve my problems.
There are so many great books in the world. Why would I waste my time on stories that don’t take me anywhere worth visiting?
It’s hard to get away from them, that’s why.
The New York publishing houses are full of stories about the wealthy and semi-wealthy in the Northeast. They’re all over the bookstores . They feature prominently in libraries’ physical locations and their online book selections.
I like books about lost, dissatisfied people when they also present remedies. The lost, dissatisfied person discovers how to appreciate what they have, or follow their lodestar, or steel themselves to the circumstances. They are agents in their own lives. They are people in frank engagement with the universe, honestly committed to real life.