The Social Climber's Handbook: A Novel - Softcover

Guest Reviewer: Gigi Levangie Grazer
Gigi Levangie Grazer is the author of four novels: Rescue Me (2000), Maneater (2003), The Starter Wife (2006), and Queen Takes King (2010). The Starter Wife was adapted for an Emmy Award-winning USA Network miniseries starring Debra Messing, and later for a television series; Maneater was adapted for a Lifetime miniseries starring Sarah Chalke in May 2009. In addition, Gigi wrote the screenplay for Stepmom, starring Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon. Gigi's articles have appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Glamour. She lives in L.A. with her two children and three miniature dachshunds.

Molly Jong-Fast writes what she knows, topped with a healthy dose of imagination and a wicked sense of humor. Her first, much praised novel, Normal Girl, published when she was practically a fetus, just twenty-two years old, hit autobiographical notes detailing life as a young New York socialite. Now, our Molly’s all grown up--an Upper East Side mom of three with a financier husband, the perfect raw material to mine for this hilarious satire of life in our brave new economic world--featuring a recessionista-gone-rabid you won’t forget.

It’s the Summer of 2008. The world is on the brink of financial collapse--a disaster for many, but a total meltdown for Upper East Side housewife Daisy Greenbaum. When Daisy learns her husband is privy to dangerous information, she knows it will cost him his powerful position at The Bank, and everything his income provides, from the daily hair blow-outs to their exclusive Park Avenue apartment. Already struggling to keep her family together in the face of Manhattan prep school drama and a persistent mistress nipping at her husband’s well-heeled heels, Daisy can’t let this little economy issue get in her way. To keep her family on top, Daisy will eliminate anything--and, more importantly, anyone--that stands in her way, one body bag at a time. She may even break a nail doing it.

As heads literally start to roll, things gets infinitely more complicated for our Daisy. Molly Jong-Fast unequivocally scores big with this outrageous look at life at the precarious top. Her trademark wit and keen eye shine through, making this twisted tale a hit, and definitely the most fun with recession you’ll ever have.

A Letter from Author Molly Jong-Fast
Why my husband is not the husband of Daisy Greenbaum in my new novel, The Social Climber’s Handbook.

My protagonist in The Social Climber’s Handbook is a downtrodden, desperate woman who comes close to total social and financial obliteration because of the 2008 credit crisis. She decides she must take desperate measures to save her family, and through those desperate measures she finds her true self. That true self is...a female serial killer.

So how is my husband, who works in finance, different from Daisy Greenbaum’s husband, who works in finance? First things first. Daisy Greenbaum is rich. We are not. Daisy Greenbaum’s husband, Dick, heads a proprietary trading desk at a big investment bank. Dick Greenbaum is a proud protector of the status quo, a smart guy who went into investment banking. A decade or two earlier he would have been a corporate lawyer, and maybe a half a century ago he would have been a doctor, but neither of those fields now produce the kind of payout that I-banking does.

Dick Greenbaum also hates the WASP establishment, which he feels is keeping him down. Dick Greenbaum considers himself to be an outsider. He went to Brandeis because he did not get into an Ivy League school. Dick Greenbaum was the kind of guy who always wanted to be two things--tall and rich. Tallness was out of the question, but richness seemed to be doable.

But “making it” has its price. Dick Greenbaum hates himself for the riches he feels he does not deserve.

In contrast, my husband is an activist investor who tries to help the companies he invests in, such as misunderstood for-profit colleges and other out-of-favor businesses. My husband went to Yale. This doesn’t really mean anything except that, having gone to Yale, he has no resentment towards people who got to go to Yale. My husband was also an academic for many years. Having been a professor, he knows just how humbling, how savage, and how petty academic work can be, and he knows that finance is a much more genteel profession. He is also tall. While tallness in itself is no virtue, at least he doesn’t spend a lot of time being jealous of tall people.

Part of the difference between my husband and Dick is that my husband doesn’t have such outsized dreams. He wants to be happy, to be successful, and most of all, to produce happy, successful children. Dick Greenbaum would like to dominate the world and get back at everyone he thinks may have kept him down.

But ultimately the biggest difference between my husband and Dick Greenbaum is that my husband doesn’t have a mistress. If he did, then I would kill him, and then I would be just like my protagonist.