Emily Everett, "All That Life Can Afford" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2025)

May 27, 2025

In this engaging discussion, Emily Everett, an editor and writer from western Massachusetts, delves into her debut novel, 'All That Life Can Afford.' She shares Anna's journey from a modest upbringing in Massachusetts to the opulent lifestyle of London’s elite, exploring the clash of class and privilege. The conversation highlights themes of personal reinvention, literary influences on character development, and the harsh realities of financial constraints. Everett also recommends books that resonate with these themes, intertwining hope and survival.

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ANECDOTE

Anna's London Escape Story

Emily Everett shares that her character Anna feels destabilized and escapes painful past by moving to London.
Anna's experience is autobiographical, but dramatized for novelistic tension and vulnerability.

ANECDOTE

Contrasting Student Dreams Abroad

Emily Everett tutored young Brits eager to study in the U.S. while she herself craved a life in London.
She shows the contrasting dreams of students wanting unfamiliar lives abroad.

ANECDOTE

Wealth Distorts Community Connections

Emily Everett describes her friendships with privileged people in London as fairly egalitarian but limited by financial realities.
Anna faces exclusion from some social events due to economic disparities despite generally being liked.

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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.

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