No, Dear... The Super-Rich AREN'T Just Like Us (Good Rich People REVIEW)

Imagine your life is just about as hard and bad (and awful and scary) as life can get.

You have no home, no belongings.

No friends.

Nothing.

Yet somehow, despite your complete and utter lack of anything, “the system” can’t seem to manage helping you get back on your feet, or to allow you to feel as though you actually belong, to… anything. 

But then, on one otherwise ordinary (in other words, basically terrible) day, you find yourself in surroundings such as you’ve never seen, or even dreamt (for to dream, you first have to be able to comprehend)… the literal Lap of Luxury, where no desire—no matter how grandiose—will go unfulfilled (let alone any need, because down this particular rabbit hole, Alice, there is no such concept as “need”). 

What would you do… especially if it became possible for you—sans any pesky repercussions—to step into such a fantasy life and live it, for your very own?

Eliza Jane Brazier poses that compelling question in her latest thriller, Good Rich People.

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From the outside, Lyla and Graham are the epitome of the golden couple, enjoying the ideal life. With an almost-impossibly cantilevered modern home clinging oh-so-precariously to the rocky hillside in the Hollywood Hills [which is saying something, in an area where anyone who’s anyone has a house that could be thus described], posh luxury cars, fabulous designer wardrobes and jewels, and enough money to afford all the pampering [plus any elective surgical treatments to tweak little things which Mother Nature may not have gotten quite perfect] their hearts could possibly desire, they are the Beautiful Power Couple to which everyone else in their set aspires. 

The fact that golden couple Graham and Lyla aren’t remotely “nice” or “good” people [understatement of the year, that] matters not; no one else in their circle is particularly pleasant, either. As for their happiness, you might ask? Well, what is “happy”, really…?

Meanwhile—a mere mile or so away—another youngish woman lives a very different existence. Never having much, things have gotten progressively worse for her, to the point that she now finds herself experiencing homelessness, for the first time. Her current abode? A little shelter she’s erected in a tiny nook under a support in an underpass off the 101 Freeway.

Until one night, when fate intervenes. A chance meeting between this woman and a staggering-drunk (and very wealthy) stranger—who has lost her phone, effectively putting the kibosh on an Uber ride—results in the unhoused woman taking pity on the other, and walking her home… all the way from the grubby underpass, up the straight-out-of-a-storybook hairpin streets into the odd mixture of old-and-new glamor and trying-too-hard-to-act-rich-to-pull-it-off deshabille, in the nearby Hollywood Hills.

When morning comes, though, the fairy tale fractures… because the Good Samaritan—who’d fallen asleep after drinking a couple of glasses of wine she’d been offered as thanks for seeing the inebriated partier safely home—wakes up to find the other woman has OD’d overnight.

And who doesn’t know how that’s gonna look to the cops?

But The Fates aren’t done with her yet, for just when she’s bolting out the door, she runs right into… Lyla, the beautiful, wealthier-than-the-gods envy of the neighborhood… who just so happens to be renting out the lower-level guesthouse of her home to Demi. (That would be the oh-so-recently-deceased Demi.)

The kicker? Lyla has never actually met (nor even laid eyes on) her new tenant; the rental arrangements were all taken care of online. And, surprisingly, Lyla seems thrilled to finally be meeting the new renter (even if said occupant does seem oddly disheveled and as skittish as a baby bunny). 

And just like that, the (soon-to-be-previously)-unhoused woman sees a crazypants way out of her present predicament: to be Demi.

Of course, there’s another kicker [you knew there would be, right?]: Lyla and Graham aren’t anything like your average landlords. They have a vicious little game—one to which only they know the rules (and the very existence of, in fact)—up their designer sleeves, which they play with their unsuspecting tenants. It’s one the bored, cruel couple have played numerous times before… and it’s one which they never lose.

Then again, they’ve never played their twisted game against someone like “Demi”—a phoenix rising from the ashes of poverty and desperation, as it were—before.

They might just have finally met their match.

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There are a couple of ways to read Good Rich People. The first—which is how most people probably will—is to view it as a devilishly-crafted thriller… made palatable by its very “unlikeliness”, if you will, as it calls for a suspension of disbelief. (It is a very, very good thriller,  and a pretty fantastical tale, so that’s cool.)

The second way involves a somewhat more nuanced read—the sort made possible only by firsthand experience with the subject matter— wherein the story isn’t great merely because of its design, but because so much of it rings undeniably true… which is how I read this one. Having plenty of very good friends who live/have lived in those hills [so, yes, there are decent folks living there, too]… but even more acquaintances, who fall much nearer the Lyla-&-Graham end of the power-and-privilege spectrum (albeit not quite that gorgeous or loaded) of being “really-not-very-nice-at-all”, I had no trouble buying these characters, at all, because I’ve met them.

Good Rich People is a great read… heading, at times, where you think it might, before veering sharply off down a path you didn't even see coming [and don’t worry, I’m giving you no more spoilers than perusing the back of the book jacket would], as it leads you on a—by turns—shocking, funny, appalling, and bizarre trip from the lowest levels of existence in L.A. to some of the loftiest echelons… and all within the teeny-tiny space of just a couple of square miles.

If you’re craving a diabolically-twisted tale that hooks its elaborately-manicured claws into you (and refuses, point-blank, to let go, because where’s the fun in that?!), then Good Rich People demands its rightful place at the top of your list. 

~GlamKitty