Cosplaying Rich
Reviewing: All That Life Can Afford by Emily Everett
Keywords: London glamour, elite social circles, gossip girl vibes but also not really?
The Plot
Anna is a financially struggling American graduate student living in London while completing a Master’s degree in British Literature. Working as a tutor to children of wealthy families, she is living paycheck to paycheck, in the proximity of aristocratic social circles. She’s further drawn into the orbit when one of her student’s family invites her on an all-expense tutoring vacation in Saint-Tropez. Anna gets the chance to cosplay rich for a bit and as she navigates elite parties, messy relationships, and her career aspirations, we explore how social mobility in the British context operates.
The Wins
This was a light, fast read, which was exactly what I wanted at the time. The pacing made it easy to move through, and the premise itself is compelling. I love a good commentary about class and social mobility and the premise reminded me a bit of Jane Eyre.
I liked the way Anna’s thesis mirrored the events of the novel. There was a real opportunity here to engage with topics like wealth, inheritance, and our current ‘eat the rich’ cultural moment. The Saltburn vibes were strong in the opening chapters. I also appreciated the exploration of word of mouth as a mechanism that keeps elite communities insular and self-protecting. Access isn’t blocked by explicit rules, but by recommendation, familiarity, and proximity, a subtle but accurate observation.
The Misses
The reality TV parallels occasionally tipped into tacky. Julian, heir to a biscuit empire and star of Chelsea Made, is an unmistakable nod to Made in Chelsea’s Jamie Laing. It’s a fun detail, but I’m not convinced it added much beyond surface recognition and it pulled me out of the book.
Some character dynamics felt underdeveloped, particularly the connection between Faye and Theo. While the ending was overall predictable, deeper exploration of certain dynamics earlier on would have made it more satisfying. At times, the story read more like a film than a novel, visually coded and slick, but lacking emotional depth. Supporting characters, Liv and Andre, also felt underwritten. Their limited presence raised questions about Anna’s life before London and why she feels like such an outsider and who she really is.
The ending also felt unrealistically perfect. Landing a dream job at the British Library, doing exactly what she wants, in a role seemingly created specifically for her, would be incredibly difficult to achieve in the current climate, especially given her circumstances. I would have preferred a more grounded exploration of how she arrived there. This ending also clashes with the book’s earlier commentary on word of mouth and social mobility. Even if Anna remains financially precarious, she still secures an exceptionally prestigious opportunity, one that seems to contradict the novel’s own assertions about how difficult access is without connections. Perhaps this was the author’s way of bringing a happy ending to an overall bleak society, but I think my headspace is one that just doesn’t buy that fantastical piece of an overall grounded book.
Takeaways
This novel was good but I wanted a deeper interrogation of privilege, including Anna’s own. For instance, she is poor, but she still has an American passport, the ability to pay international tuition, and the freedom to move to London, one of the most expensive cities in the world. That tension is present but never fully explored.
What I do like is the exploration of how people with wealth move differently through life. The chapter with the oysters on vacation, well, I won’t get into details, but that was a good example, if not a bit too on the nose, of how people with wealth have the privilege to simply not worry or care.
Final Rating
★★★☆☆ (3/5)
A fast, enjoyable read with an appealing premise and sharp observations, but for me too many themes, class, access, privilege, remain underexplored. Stylish and readable, but a missed opportunity to go deeper.