Book of the month
Simon and Schuster, $13 ebook
When anthropologist Wednesday Martin moved to New York’s chic Upper East Side with her family, she thought she knew what she was in for. After all, she’d lived in the West Village, itself an incredibly privileged enclave (home to Carrie from Sex and the City).
But as she explains in this highly entertaining – if possibly exaggerated – study, nothing could prepare her for the tribal behaviour of the women she met at the school gate, in Soul Cycle classes, and shopping the produce aisles of Dean and Deluca.
“Everything was so honeyed and moneyed and immaculate that it made me dizzy sometimes,” she writes.
While she was initially shunned by the women of the Upper East Side (she grew up in the Midwest and wasn’t nearly as wealthy as them), Martin became fixated on fitting in, learning their customs and convincing her husband to finance a $15,000 Birkin handbag she wore like a shield.
Over time she won their trust, gaining access to private charity events, dinner parties and exclusive playdates, and she gleefully reports back on what she found – interesting tidbits such as the ‘wife bonus’ she says men would give their stay-at-home partners to spend on luxury goods, which could be in excess of $150,000 a year.
While these women’s lives are revealed as fairly bonkers, Martin paints them in a sympathetic light. The pressure they’re under to appear flawless and raise exceptional children is unfair, she says.
This fun book provides a fly-on-the-wall glimpse at a life we can only laugh at.
Words by Eleanor Black
Photos by Thinkstock Images and Supplied