The teenaged characters in the novel are enamored by their first forays into Manhattan social life and all that it brings: dating, competition, and great risk. Here, appearance is the most important value, replacing all moral virtues as the ultimate sign of viability and personal triumph. The upper-class Manhattan world is characterized as saturated by power and luxury, but also incorrigibly broken and deceitful. Retreating two weeks into the past, the novel begins to draw out the events that led to Elizabeth’s death and the various people who made the sisters’ life a struggle. Elizabeth’s fiancé, Henry Schoonmaker, who harbors a secret crush on Diana, notes that the circumstances of Mr. Elizabeth died just before she was to marry into one of the city’s richest families, reinforcing the sisters’ position. Diana and Elizabeth were known as daughters of New York City’s elite tradition. The book begins at the funeral of Elizabeth Holland.
This complex, shifting, and non-linear plot serves to produce an anachronistic characterization of the destructive social dynamism of American capitalism’s upper echelons. The novel is structured episodically, rotating perspectives between three minor characters, as well as the two sisters who are its central protagonists.
When the sisters’ father dies and his rich legacy suddenly holds no weight, they scramble to stabilize their lives before they fall from high society and are forced to undergo a drastic shift in consciousness. Set in 1899 New York, it follows two sisters, Elizabeth and Diana Holland, who hail from the elite class of Manhattan. “Mystery, romance, jealousy, betrayal, humor, and gorgeous, historically accurate details.Anna Godbersen’s young adult historical novel The Luxe (2007) is the first book in a tetralogy. This is Manhattan, 1899.Īfter bidding good-bye to New York’s brightest star, Elizabeth Holland, rumors continue to fly about her untimely demise.Īll eyes are on those closest to the dearly departed: her mischievous sister, Diana, now the family’s only hope for redemption New York’s most notorious cad, Henry Schoonmaker, the flame Elizabeth never extinguished the seductive Penelope Hayes, poised to claim all that her best friend left behind-including Henry even Elizabeth’s scheming former maid, Lina Broud, who discovers that while money matters and breeding counts, gossip is the new currency.
True love. False friends. Scandalous gossip. In this delicious sequel to the New York Times bestselling The Luxe, nothing is more dangerous than a scandal.or more precious than a secret. Gossip Girl meets the Gilded Age in this delicious and compelling novel, the second in the New York Times bestselling series from author Anna Godbersen.Īs old friends become rivals, Manhattan’s most dazzling socialites find their futures threatened by whispers from the past.
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