One Flight Up

May 30, 2011
India Chumley, Abby Adams, Esme Talbot, and Monique Dawkins-Dubois have been friends since attending Sibley, an exclusive Manhattan prep school. Now that they are all grown up, they're discovering that their lives and relationships aren't quite what they'd expected. India is in a mildly satisfying but bland relationship with a French chef, Julien, while she works as a divorce lawyer and juggles the needs of her manic mother. Abby has subsumed her own artistic desires to support her perpetually insecure husband Nathaniel, but begins to question those choices when she discovers her husband's infidelity. Whereas Esme has never stopped cheating on her adoring husband Tim, because she feels that it keeps a relationship fresh; that all changes, however, when she meets billionaire playboy Michael Alders. Monique and her husband haven't had sex in years, but have an otherwise happy union, until she starts a heated affair with a coworker that leaves her blind to eventual charges of sexual harassment. It would be easy for readers to dismiss this as another look at four privileged Manhattanites and their midlife sexcapades but this is a surprisingly good look at the struggles of women in relationships. While it is definitely heavy on the luxury and brand-name dropping, the characters are funny, the writing is deft, and the story is oddly compelling.