Review: Rich & Pretty by Rumaan Alam
Featuring a study on the "Insta-snapshot" description technique
A satirical literary novel on Manhattan socialites showing whatâs behind their photos.
This book gets a LOT of mixed reviews, and Iâm not surprised, because I think a lot of people didnât know what to expect from it. This book helped me to better understand what contemporary literary fiction is:
Itâs not a story. Itâs an art exhibition.
Thatâs the only way to understand this book. If you go into it waiting for some huge climax to happen, or anticipating a momentous reveal at the end, you will be disappointed. This novel is not about plot; itâs all about characters. Specifically, it examines the relationship of the platonic best friends Sarah and Lauren entirely from their perspectives. However, what a lot of people failed to miss in their reviews of this book is just how satirical it really is. I thought the extreme snark made it obvious because it literally seeped off the pages.
This work is the opposite of âwhy the friendship of women endures everythingâ or âthat book that made me remember why I love my bestie.â (Clearly a lot of the reviewers thought thatâs what it was supposed to be when they left their angry reviews đ). This book is the unfiltered, petty, biting remarks that these women honestly think of each other but will never admit aloud.
What makes it most interesting for me is that the author Rumaan Alam â a gay man of Bengali descent who lived in New York â is aware of the privileges of these women in a way that the characters themselves are not, and can never really be. Perhaps thatâs why he can highlight the full spectrum of their shadow sides so well.
Once I understood what this book was, then I could see it as it had been laid out, a series of snapshots of whatâs in their heads, and around them, and what theyâre hiding from. (These "Insta-snapshot" descriptions were beautifully done â more on that technique later on in this post.) Since both women are constantly obsessed with how they are being perceived, you can feel how they live partly outside of themselves.
Everyone wants to be them, âRich & Prettyâ (the nicknames they were given, for one is rich while the other one is pretty) ⊠except them. Neither of the girls seems to enjoy their lives and keeps thinking it would be better from the otherâs perspective.
Together, they are supposed to have it all. But they both feel so empty, trying to fill their lives with so much stuff to make it seem like it all has a point. When the author peels back the masks of both, you see the extreme contrast between their appearances and their actual petty thoughts.
The climax is their fight:
"Are we friends anymore? Or is this friendship just a force of habit?"
Spoiler alert: It was just a habit, but neither wants to admit it, and they just stay friends. I was like, "But WHY?" and yet, I realized I know people like this, people who use a person to fill the gap another person left behind. Here, Sarahâs only brother had died when she was young, and it seems her way of coping with that was to latch onto this girl Lauren that her parents approved of and "made her" the sister she never had. It was this unspoken understanding that they would never break their connection, and because the brother-less Sarah is wealthy but her friend Lauren is not, Lauren benefits from letting her "adopted sister" pay for all sorts of things, etc. So they used each other, basically. Interestingly, they both use each other to escape various things, which reminds me of their home New York in so many ways. Let me explain:
How this book nailed the New York vibe perfectly:
All throughout this book, I was reminded of the song âNew Yorkâ by the band U2, particularly the lines:
âIn New York you can forget,
forget how to sit stillâŠâ
In New York I lost it all
To you and your vices
Still I'm staying on to figure out
Midlife crisis
Neither of these women, both in their early 30s, wants to slow down, stop, and really reflect on their life because it would be too disappointing, so they donât. Theyâre both always running to the next function, event, fling, distraction, running, running, running to drown out everything they donât want to face.
I made a list of things they avoid discussing that never get resolved just to prove this point:
đââïžAll they run from:
Sarah never says more than a sentence of two about her dead brother, even to Lauren, who the whole family treats as âher sister.â
Lauren knows Sarah isnât really in love with her fiancĂ© Dan (Heâs treated like an accessory.)
Lauren shows no signs of being excited to be the maid of honor in Sarahâs wedding, no initiative to plan anything. Lauren is always late to dinners to talk about it. She refuses to admit, even to herself, how much she clearly resents doing it but feels obligated to, always âtoldâ what to do it by her bossy and plan-obsessed bestie Sarah.
Sarah says, âDan would never cheat. He doesnât have time.â Yet that line feels very much like she doesnât really care what heâs doing with his time. She talks about him like clothing (âYou want to be seen with him at parties.â) Yet she ignores reasons why he DOESNâT show up at parties with her.
Lauren doesnât like to be touched by Sarahâs father, as if he has harmed her before, but no one talks about it.
Sarah had a miscarriage, but shows no feelings about it and wonât discuss it.
Lauren had an abortion, but they wonât talk about it.
Their lack of showing emotion around these things on the pages makes it feel like theyâre deeply emotionally repressed or escapist types. On the other hand, I think the omission of bigger emotions is intentionally done. If readers could see more of their deeper emotional pain though, then it wouldnât be the satire that it is.
Now for the writing craft discussion, I loved this thing Iâm now calling:
đžThe "Insta-snapshot" description technique
Every scene opened with or contained one of these moments: typically 1-2 paragraphs long. I could see these moments so clearly, just like the Instagram photos I imagine these âInsta-girlsâ taking. This layered description does so much to show:
Internal thoughts & voiceđ«š
History rememberedđïž
Hope for whatâs nextđź
Evocative sensory detailđ
PLUS the tension between the two friends for being envious of what each other has that they do notđ€ș
Follow the emoji symbols to see where these bits occur:
I especially love the tension between them. Note that at the opening of this scene, theyâve just been smoking and want to freshen up for the party. Sarah (Ms. Rich) is asking Lauren (Ms. Pretty) why she never returns her calls. Lauren (ever-resentful) never gives a reason, her classic passive-aggressive comeback. At the sceneâs end, the tension appears again as Sarah is fighting back to be âmore prettyâ than her friend, using the subtle diction of âadding inchesâ to tower over Lauren with âunassailableâ taste. This kind of catty subtext lingers throughout the book.
See how SO much appears on just one page: their history together, the atmosphere, Laurenâs mood here as weâre in Laurenâs POV to show what Lauren is really hoping to get out of this party, and the feeling that they are like sisters, even in the way they try to outdo each other subtly. Itâs an Instagram photo on a page, complete with commentary and filters. I see that bathroom, feel the undertones, and Iâm there. Well done.
Thanks for reading đ
Stay tuned next month, for during the first week of June, Iâll need you to vote on my next random library read!