A middle-aged Londoner gets a keyhole view into a diametrically different life after she reconnects with an old schoolmate in Harriet Lane's quick-witted and dire outside-looking-in novel, Other People's Fun.
As the novel opens, narrator Ruth Saving, a milquetoast freelance translator, is at her old boarding school attending a memorial that doubles as an informal reunion. There she runs into Sookie Utley (now Inchcape), the "stand-out star of our year," who has married a wealthy businessman and hasn't lost any of her sparkle. Back in London, Ruth and Sookie begin to socialize. Having recently been left by her husband, Ruth could use the support of a friend, but it soon becomes apparent that Sookie is only in it for Sookie. A tables-turning opportunity arrives when Ruth learns, and eventually acts on, a highly exploitable secret about her new confidante.
Unfolding in one long riff (there are no chapter demarcations), Other People's Fun is a lightly plotted slow-boiler: Ruth's moves are gradual, stealthy, and considered. Lane (Alys, Always; Her) is a supremely good writer who connects every time she takes a swing at the bottomlessly moneyed social-media-fueled life (in a characteristic gesture, Sookie whips out her phone to show Ruth "a particular bathtub she liked in a Parisian hotel, and also Gwyneth Paltrow's cooker"). When it comes to Sookie, Ruth's morality may be shaky, but she's confident about what she sees: "None of it matters, the culottes, the car with its leather interior, the entitlement, the monstrous self-assurance. We are both alone." --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer