Rich and Pretty: A Novel
Written by Rumaan Alam
Narrated by Julie McKay
3/5
()
About this audiobook
This irresistible debut, set in contemporary New York, provides a sharp, insightful look into how the relationship between two best friends changes when they are no longer coming of age but learning how to live adult lives.
As close as sisters for twenty years, Sarah and Lauren have been together through high school and college, first jobs and first loves, the uncertainties of their twenties and the realities of their thirties.
Sarah, the only child of a prominent intellectual and a socialite, works at a charity and is methodically planning her wedding. Lauren—beautiful, independent, and unpredictable—is single and working in publishing, deflecting her parents’ worries and questions about her life and future by trying not to think about it herself. Each woman envies—and is horrified by—particular aspects of the other’s life, topics of conversation they avoid with masterful linguistic pirouettes.
Once, Sarah and Lauren were inseparable; for a long a time now, they’ve been apart. Can two women who rarely see one other, selectively share secrets, and lead different lives still call themselves best friends? Is it their abiding connection—or just force of habit—that keeps them together?
With impeccable style, biting humor, and a keen sense of detail, Rumaan Alam deftly explores how the attachments we form in childhood shift as we adapt to our adult lives—and how the bonds of friendship endure, even when our paths diverge.
Rumaan Alam
Rumaan Alam is the author of the novels Rich and Pretty, That Kind of Mother, and the instant New York Times bestseller Leave the World Behind. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, and the New Republic, where he is a contributing editor. He studied writing at Oberlin College and lives in New York with his family.
More audiobooks from Rumaan Alam
Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5That Kind of Mother: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to Rich and Pretty
Related audiobooks
Laura & Emma Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tuesday Nights in 1980 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cobble Hill: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Divines: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stay Up with Hugo Best: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Monogamy: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Family Trust: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Lovers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Are All Good People Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All This Could Be Yours Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Grown Up Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mrs. Fletcher Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perfect Tunes Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5White Elephant: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boys' Club: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Can Only Save Ourselves: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Cave Dwellers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5White Ivy: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Last Romantics: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Grown Ups Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5She Regrets Nothing: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wildcat: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFriendship Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fault Lines: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Regulars Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Sunburn: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Privilege: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Behavior of Love: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Astrid Sees All: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Literary Fiction For You
Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Poisonwood Bible Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Yellowface: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Measure: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Tom Lake: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Parable of the Sower Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stardust Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Their Eyes Were Watching God Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hang the Moon: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Name of the Wind Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kindred Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray: Classic Tales Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The House in the Cerulean Sea Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Alchemist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5CATCH-22 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of Achilles: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nothing to See Here Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dutch House: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Rich and Pretty
74 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This novel feels almost a little to close to real life. It chronicles the challenges of two female friends as their lives begin to change as one marries and starts a family while the other struggles to establish a committed relationship. For all that these women are "rich and pretty", these themes feel normal and almost mundane. Okay for a novel, but I kept wanting more from this one.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Characters are flat. They don’t progress or grow throughout the narrative.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5it's shocking to me that this book was written by a man. I find few books that speak to me as much as this one did. The author must be a very perceptive individual.
It felt like it was written for me and this particular moment in my life. I'm marginally younger than the protagonists but very much in the same phase of life, where I am struggling with my life diverging from my best friends that I have known and loved for years. We used to be on the same page and now we are not.
Our friendships are shifting and it can be a bittersweet experience, one I think that the author captured perfectly. It is somewhat painful to realize that things you thought you had in common you do not. That you don't share a heart and mind and vision of the future, like it may have once seemed. You can judge each other harshly for this. I'm searching now for that depth of love in these friendships to pull us through this time. And I believe it will like it ultimately does in this story.
The characters were real and complex. The story had a slow but consistent pace and was not overly dramatic or melodramatic. - Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Couldn't go past page 30. Fragmented style did not entice me.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5LOVED this book. Lauren and Sarah were delightfully flawed, Huck and Lulu were huge characters who didn't take over the story, Dan was ambivalently important, and Rumaan Alam created a world I readily dove in to and loved. The friendship between Lauren and Sarah was really well written and felt really real, like these characters were based on actual women with a complicated best friendship. The elements of setting, story, and character were brought together wonderfully and I could just keep reading and reading about this world. Big thumbs up!
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The jacket of the book was so good. Disappointed with the stories and the characters. Borderline boring! I received a free copy of this book thru a giveaway.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Why? Why was this book written, and why did it enjoy critical acclaim? This reads like a writing exercise. Write in the voice of affluent white women, one who takes the Park Slope breeder path, the other a "career gal" who sleeps around and has no interest in children. As an exercise Alam does a decent job. I recognized many aspects of these women, real versions of whom I know many. He got some wrong too. Everything from childbirth on in Sarah's story is so inauthentic it made me laugh, he clearly got it from reading Liane Moriarty or someone similar. Lauren reads more like a Gay man than a thirtysomething straight woman. Like Samantha on Sex and the City. On the whole though he got more right than wrong, and the prose is well crafted. But there is no there here. There is no story of interest, no plot at all. (Women grow up, one gets married and has a baby, the other screws up relationships and excels at work, perhaps because of her fraught but entirely unexamined relationship with her hopelessly declasse parents, who are so ordinary they have flower shaped soaps in the powder room.) The characters are not nearly interesting enough to sustain the reader where there is no story. An utter waste of time, but not unpleasant.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Such a good book about friendship. Always interesting when a man writes well about women
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The story of a pair of best friends as they navigate through their young adulthood. Although very close they have different perspectives on marriage, kids and to some extent men. Sarah is still very close to her family but Lauren is not. They met when they were eleven years old telling each other everything when they were young. Now older they have drifted apart due to their diverse interests and goals. I feel that this is a very realistic portrayal of upper crust women and is worthy of reading. Not a very complex plot but well done.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A book about women's friendship. A series of anecdotes, really. Sarah and Lauren meet at school when they are 11 and remain friends for over 25 years, sometimes close and sometimes drifting apart, but always knowing their friendship will never be really over, because they need each other. Not too much actually happens in the book, although there are events that move the two friends more firmly into full adulthood. A pleasant read.