The Rich People Have Gone Away
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Summary
Ordinary New Yorkers are brought together in a story of betrayal, race, what connects us to each other – and what sets us apart
***A ROXANE GAY BOOK CLUB 2024 SELECTION***
'A marvel... A masterpiece' PAUL HARDING
'Prescient and profound' BRYAN WASHINGTON
'Riveting and original' CHARMAINE WILKERSON
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his blonde, blue-eyed, pregnant wife Darla head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their fancy apartment building has this privilege: not Xavier, the restless teenager in the Cardi B t-shirt, nor Darla’s black best friend Ruby and her partner Katsumi, who stay behind to save their restaurant.
During an upstate hike, Theo lets slip a long-held secret about his mixed-up ancestry – and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect at the centre of a front-page police search for the perfect missing woman.
'A lush study' RAVEN LEILANI
'Astute... An immersive examination of the human condition' ZAKIYA DALILA HARRIS
'A keen observer of people and classic' MATEO ASKARIPOUR
***A ROXANE GAY BOOK CLUB 2024 SELECTION***
'A marvel... A masterpiece' PAUL HARDING
'Prescient and profound' BRYAN WASHINGTON
'Riveting and original' CHARMAINE WILKERSON
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his blonde, blue-eyed, pregnant wife Darla head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their fancy apartment building has this privilege: not Xavier, the restless teenager in the Cardi B t-shirt, nor Darla’s black best friend Ruby and her partner Katsumi, who stay behind to save their restaurant.
During an upstate hike, Theo lets slip a long-held secret about his mixed-up ancestry – and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect at the centre of a front-page police search for the perfect missing woman.
'A lush study' RAVEN LEILANI
'Astute... An immersive examination of the human condition' ZAKIYA DALILA HARRIS
'A keen observer of people and classic' MATEO ASKARIPOUR
Reviews
Regina Porter has written another marvel of a novel. The Rich People Have Gone Away gives the reader a spiraling cross-section of richly drawn, impeccably observed New Yorkers... A kind of masterpiece of human portraiture that simultaneously renders quintessential depictions of the city, of America, and of the whole world in these first fraught decades of the 21st century
Paul Harding, author of This Other Eden
