The Party Upstairs By Lee Conell – Audiobook Online
The Party Upstairs is a novel written by Lee Conell. It tells the story of Ruby, a young woman who works as a nanny for a wealthy family in an upscale Manhattan apartment building. The book explores themes of class, privilege, and the complexities of human relationships.
The story is set in the Upper East Side of New York City, where Ruby lives in the basement apartment of the building she works in. The building is owned by her employers, Josh and Jessica, who live on the top floor with their two children. Ruby has been working for the family for several years and has become intimately familiar with their lives and routines.
As the title suggests, much of the novel takes place during a party that Josh and Jessica throw for their neighbors and friends. The party serves as a backdrop for exploring the dynamics between the characters and delving into their individual struggles and desires.
Ruby, despite being an outsider in this world of wealth and privilege, is keenly observant and perceptive. She notices the tensions and secrets that lie beneath the surface of her employers’ seemingly perfect lives. Throughout the book, Ruby grapples with her own ambitions and dreams while navigating her complex relationship with Josh and Jessica.
One of the central conflicts in the novel revolves around Ruby’s desire to pursue her passion for writing. She aspires to be a writer but feels trapped in her role as a nanny, constantly putting her own dreams on hold to cater to the needs of others. This struggle is further complicated by her growing attraction to Josh, which adds an element of forbidden desire to their already complicated dynamic.
As the party unfolds, tensions rise, secrets are revealed, and relationships are tested. The book explores themes of social class and inequality, as well as the ways in which power dynamics shape our interactions with others. It also delves into questions of identity and self-discovery, as Ruby grapples with who she wants to be and what she wants out of life.
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The Party Upstairs
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Sophie Amoss
A gripping debut novel unfolds in a single day inside a posh New York City apartment building, as tensions between the building’s superman and his eldest daughter spark. a crisis that at the end of the day changes everything.
Ruby has an odd relationship with privilege. She grew up superman’s daughter in the basement of an Upper West Side co-op, which grew more luxurious with each passing year. Although she herself was not economically privileged, her close childhood friendship with Caroline, the daughter of a wealthy tenant, and living in such a wealthy neighborhood, near the Museum Her beloved Natural History, had given her certain advantages, even expectations. Naturally, Ruby followed her dream and borrowed money to attend a prestigious small liberal arts college and discover her interest in the arts. But now, after a while out of college, she can’t land her dream job, or anything like that, and she’s forced by circumstances to do the last thing she want to do: move back to live with parents, come back to life. Basement. And Caroline is throwing one of her parties tonight, in her father’s splendid penthouse, a party that Ruby both looks forward to and dreads.
With the narrative control of thrillers, The Party Upstairs distills the intellectual world of family, grand expectations, and implicit class violence into a gripping, darkly witty tale of a certain day. the only mission inside the Manhattan co-op that Ruby calls home. Told from the alternate perspectives of Ruby and her father, the novel builds from the flames of an early morning argument between them to the final fire it leads to at the end of the day. By the time the ash cools, the facade that conceals the building’s power structure will have burned down and not a single party will be left intact.
Perhaps, there is a limited storyline here, and the main characters go astray many times, performing actions that seem a bit unbelievable. But the themes seem new to me, the main characters don’t seem to settle down – instead they seem like kind smart people living through dark times, sometimes seemingly very dark for reasons they don’t fully understand. On the one hand, this is a book about grief, on the other, a book about how having money or not having money shapes one’s worldview and life experience. Wish it wasn’t, but the story reminds us of reality.
Reading the reviews, I have to note that I don’t think trust funders fully understand the difference having money can make in one’s experience of the world. Like Caroline, they can try, but never fully understand, and so people of another class seem crazy.
Many of the metaphors or allegories in this book, I don’t remember the words for different literary techniques. But open the door for them. and you can meet them — clink wheel, mouse, bird’s eye, space, rain. This book is best when we pay attention. You don’t have to remember the names of the techniques being touched when reading.
Party Upstairs is great to read. Fast prose and engaging plot. It explored the topics of perks, benefits, and services very well. Plus, it has a wicked sense of humour. The final chapter, like the epilogue, is really rewarding. I am expecting more from this author. Encourage.
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