Maximum Shelf: EVERYBODY RISE

wcag heading

wcag heading

wcag heading

MaxShelf-EverybodyRiseLast week’s Maximum Shelf Awareness feature was on one of our favorite debut novels coming this summer: EVERYBODY RISE by New York Times reporter Stephanie Clifford.

every rise stephanieA Bonfire of the Vanities for the 21st century mixed with Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep and Amor Towles’s Rules of Civility, EVERYBODY RISE follows the rise and ultimate fall of 26-year-old Evelyn Beegan.

It’s 2006 in the Manhattan of the young and privileged, and a new generation of heirs and strivers are jockeying for social power and discovering that class, especially on the Upper East Side, still holds sway. Propelled by her social-climbing mother through an elite prep school, a posh college, and into Manhattan, Evelyn has always managed to stay just on the periphery of this world her mother so desperately wants her to become a part of. But when she takes a job at a new social networking site aimed at her very elite peers, she’s forced to leverage her few connections to work her way to the front of the pack. With the help of her prep school friends, Evelyn goes from lush “camps” in the Adirondacks and “cottages” in Newport, to Southampton weekends and clubs thick with socialites and Wall Street types, eventually befriending target #1, Camilla Rutherford a young woman who is a regular on the front page of every society blog.

In order to be accepted by this rarefied set, Evelyn must be seen as someone with established old money. Her lies start small, but quickly grow, and as she relentlessly elbows her way up the social ladder, the ground underneath her begins to give way.

The film rights have already been purchased by Fox 2000 and Clifford has fans in J. Courtney Sullivan, Emma Straub, and Malcolm Gladwell who called EVERYBODY RISE, “A 21st century version of a grand 19th century novel a smart, moving tale of class, ambition, and identity.”

“In the words of ‘Ladies Who Lunch,’ the song containing the book’s title, EVERYBODY RISE is ‘another brilliant zinger’ that puts the fine line of ambition under the societal microscope to examine where it turns from laudable to destructive. Timeless. Universal. I’ll drink to that. ”   Shelf Awareness

See the full summary, review and interview with Stephanie Clifford on Shelf-Awareness.com.

download review copy edelweissAvailable for download on Edelweiss. (Don’t see the green button? Get whitelisted.)

Praise for EVERYBODY RISE:

“A superb debut. EVERYBODY RISE is a 21st century version of a grand 19th century novel a smart, moving tale of class, ambition, and identity.”
  Malcolm Gladwell

“A masterful tale of social climbing and entrenched class distinctions… Tense, hilarious, and bursting with gorgeous language. Stephanie Clifford is a 21st century Edith Wharton.”   J  Courtney Sullivan

“Full of ambition and grit. Clifford provides sharp-eyed access to a moneyed world and its glamorous inhabitants.”   Emma Straub

EVERYBODY RISE will be available from St. Martin’s Press on August 18, 2015.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form, you accept the Mollom privacy policy.