Fake Plastic Love A Novel

Like The Great Gatsby and Bright Lights, Big City, Kimberley Tait's Fake Plastic Love examines one innocent s unsentimental education with great energy and panache.
Stewart O Nan, author of West of Sunset

Four millennial bright young things charge into the real world, with all the unfounded confidence of twenty-two:

M., our narrator, is one of the few young women at her prestigious, high-octane investment bank. To her mother s chagrin, she has always insisted she prefers her signet ring to any diamond.

Belle is M. s college best friend. Wide-eyed and whimsical, she marks the sidewalks of Manhattan with messages in pink chalk and snaps a ceaseless stream of photos for her viral blog.

Chase is Belle s British-American, on-again-off-again boyfriend. Equal parts fraternity bro and Savile Row, he is M. s colleague and arch nemesis.

Jeremy is M. s new friend, a modern-day Gatsby, dapper and earnest, who would rather be piloting a hot air balloon than stuck behind his Wall Street desk.

As the financial crisis bears down and social media grows ever more ubiquitous, style and substance become increasingly difficult to distinguish. In this fake plastic world, what do success and friendship and love even look like?

"Prepare yourself for a daring, unsparing takedown of millennial Manhattan, trick by glossy trick." --Beatriz Williams

We are a bifurcated generation, the Romantics versus the Realists: those who prefer transistor radios to Bose sound systems, scuffed ocean liner trunks to gleaming Rimowa hard shells, fountain pens to BlackBerry keyboards, restored old roadsters to eco-friendly hybrids, the unsmudgeable guarantee of old illusions to present-life ones, tinny and certain to disappoint.

When M. meets Belle at Dartmouth, they become the unlikeliest best friends. Belle is an unapologetic Romantic famous on campus for her bright red accessories and hundred-watt smile, while M. is a tomboyish Realist who insists she'll always prefer her signet ring to any diamond. Despite their differences, they are drawn together, and after graduation they both move to New York with all the unfounded confidence of twenty-two. M. secures a job at the city's most prestigious investment bank, and Belle turns her nostalgic aesthetic into one of the first lifestyle blogs, which quickly goes viral. Their future is spread before them, a glittering tableau of vintage cocktails, password-guarded parties, and high-octane ambition. But as they are pulled deeper into their new lives, and into the charming orbit of their Gatsby-esque new friend, Jeremy, style and substance--and dreams and reality--increasingly blur. In this fake plastic world, what do success and love and happiness even look like?

Dazzling, whimsical, and full of yearning, Fake Plastic Love is the transporting story of bright young things tested by the unsentimental realities of post-graduate life. Tipping its hat to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kimberley Tait's gorgeous, incisive debut is a portrait of millennial Manhattan--equal parts nostalgia and modernity--that explores the timeless question: You will be a grand total of what you spend your time doing, so what do you want to add up to?