A taut and lyrical coming-of-age debut about a young American woman navigating class, lies, and love amid LondonтАЩs jet-set elite.
I would arrive, blank like a sheet of notebook paper, and write myself new.
Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown libraryтАФits Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grindтАФthat fairy-tale life still out of reach.
Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young menтАФone who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through AnnaтАЩs struggle to outrun her past. ItтАЩs like sheтАЩs stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?
Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one youтАЩve left behind.