'Simone is one of the Glitterati, the elite living lives of luxury and leisure. Slave to the ever-changing tides – and brutal judgements - of fashion, he is immaculate. To be anything else is to be unfashionable, and no one wants to be unfashionable, or even worse, ugly…
'When Simone accidentally starts a new fashion with a nosebleed at a party, another Glitterati takes the credit. Soon their rivalry threatens to raze their opulent utopia to the ground, as no one knows how to be vicious like the beautiful ones.
'Enter a world of the most fantastic costumes, grand palaces in the sky, the grandest parties known to mankind and the unbreakable rules of how to eat ice cream. A fabulous dystopian fable about fashion, family and the feckless billionaire class.'
Glitterati is the latest novel from Oliver K. Langmead, who wrote the stunning Birds of Paradise last year. Whilst Birds of Paradise looked backwards, taking a look at the history of the world, the garden of Eden, and the first humans, Glitterati looks forward, to an unspecified future point where the mega rich live lives of luxury.
Glitterati follows Simone, a man who lives a life of absolute luxury. He, and the other Glliterati, spend their days obsessing over fashion, about looking fabulous, and chasing the next trend. Simone has a job in a beautiful, gleaming building with other Glitterati, but the job seems to consist of posing around the office, reading magazines, and pretending to be in meetings. Jobs themselves seem to be a fashion choice, and no real Glitterati would actually work for a living.
When Simone gets his days mixed up and arrives to work wearing white rather than the expected purple that he should have been wearing on a Wednesday, he gets praised for his daring choice, and is invited to a swanky party held by the much beloved Justine. The party goes well, until Simone snorts too much cocaine and ends up having a nosebleed. Simone escapes the party, hiding his shame; but is outraged the next day when Justine is on the covers of magazines sporting her latest fashion, nosebleeds. Simone believes that Justine stole his look and sets out to get back at her. This spurs off a series of events that sets the two Glitterati as enemies, and ends up changing Simone's life forever.
I feel bad saying this, but I really don't think Glitterati was the right book for me. There's nothing wrong with it, it's written really well and has some beautiful prose, but I think the subject matter is just too far out of the area of things I enjoy for me to have been the target audience for this book. Which is a shame, because Birds of Paradise was one of my favourite books of last year; I really wanted to like this one. But, not every book is going to appeal to every person, and that's fine. And whilst this review may seem negative, please be aware that this is only my opinion, and that others love this book. So please, if it sounds like something you like pick up a copy and give it a try.
Glitterati is a book that seems to celebrate in the excess of the ultra wealthy and the mega fashionable. It feels like a combination of reality shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians and London Fashion Week. Simone, and every other person we spend any real time with in this book, are wealthy to the point where they never have to think about money, where they can do whatever they like whenever they like, and don't even need to acknowledge that capitalism is a thing because they have enough money to make it happen. And everything they do is shaped around fashion and aesthetic beauty to the point where their actual lives seem empty of any real goals, passion, or personality.
The fashions on display in the book are often over the top. They seem impractical and often silly, and the lives of the fashionables seems to be one long exercise in showing off how opulent and pretty you are. Clothing isn't worn to be comfortable, or practical. Fashion seems to either be used to fit in with the crowds, with everyone dressing to certain themes on certain days, or as a way of expressing certain moods as facial expressions seem to be a thing forgotten for the Glitterati as any change in the face could ruin their perfect make-up. For example, if you're upset with someone and want to confront them about something you dress in armour, strapping decorative plates and weapons to yourself.
I know I'm not a fashionable person in real life, and I care about comfort more than how fashionable I look, so I know I don't get things like this; but it felt like Langmead had taken a look at the strangest and weirdest runway fashions in the world and asked 'what if that was everyday?'. And that's not a bad idea, and it presents some interesting and unique things that make the book stand out. But it also made it feel like this was something that I just didn't understand too. I wasn't sure if it was a satire or a serious look at what a future where these trends and themes evolved into everyday wear. I can't help but feel if I knew more about fashion, make-up, and being glamorous that I'd have gotten more out it.
The book is filled with long descriptions of clothing, make-up, and accessories that Simone uses in order to make himself fashionable. The reader gets given names of designers and companies, dropped in as casual references as a way of building the world. I liked this, I enjoyed the fact that Langmead slowly built the world of the fashionable with small context details like this, and that as the book went on you'd begin to see the same names pop up again and again. But there's a lack of larger world-building that I found left me scratching my head by the end of the book.
The fashionables live in paradise, existing in a world away from the 'uglies'. Their homes , their playgrounds, and their jobs exist near regular people, but above them or to one side. The two groups never meet, never mix, and the fashionables try not to think of regular folks. But regular people clean their homes, they cook their meals, they make their clothes. Regular folk exist within the Glitterati world unseen and un-thought of. The Glitterati are able to remove memories, to have their entire childhoods erased, and to wipe away any unkind moments of their lives. They have all this advanced technology, and have this system set up where they live in luxurious ignorance because regular people work behind the scenes. But the book never explains how or why.
We never learn how the fashionable society came into existence, how they're able to live like this whilst the rest of the world struggles on like normal. We don't know why they have more advanced technology whilst other people seem to be living in a world that seems contemporary to ours. And we never get an explanation as to why people simply don't just revolt against this system and tear down the Glitterati way of life. This is stuff that I wanted desperately to know, that I found much more interesting that simply watching Simone going to the beach or the gym and seeing how he picks out his outfits. It felt like there was an interesting world here, yet we never went beyond a narrow, surface level look at it.
I also failed to connect with Simone in any real way. Simone is, frankly, an awful person. He's vapid, self absorbed, thoughtless, selfish, whiny, and has no real redeeming features. I'm not saying every protagonist needs to be good, or even likeable, but they need to have something to them that makes me care. And I just didn't have that with Simone. He gets upset that someone 'stole' is look, but Justine didn't steal anything. It wasn't Simone's look. He was running away with a nosebleed. Justine was inspired by what happened to Simone, but it wasn't a fashion he'd made and she took the idea. But in his head it is, because he thinks he's wonderful and amazing and fabulous. And I just couldn't get on board with that. Yes, Simone does begin to change towards the end of the book, but it felt like it was too little too late, and by then I'd already come to dislike him and couldn't care if he'd finally come to realise cruelty to children wasn't okay.
I feel like I've come across as too negative towards the book with this review. Please don't feel that this is me saying it's bad. Please, try the book yourselves and come to your own conclusions about it; because there's a chance you could end up being one of the folks this book was definitely made for. There's an audience for this book, and they're loving it. It simply isn't me.
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