Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its 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 grind—that 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 men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna’s struggle to outrun her past. It’s like she’s 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 (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025) 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 you’ve left behind.
Emily Everett is an editor and writer from western Massachusetts. She is managing editor at The Common literary magazine, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.
Her short story “Solitária” was selected as a runner-up for the Kenyon Review’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest, and appears in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue. Other short fiction appears in Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review, among others. Her work has been selected for Best Small Fictions 2020, and supported by the Vermont Studio Center.
Recommended Books:
Charlotte McConaughy, Migrations
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
