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Overview
As Lily Bartholomew navigates kiddie birthday parties starring chart-topping entertainment, society dinner-dances where any woman larger than a size 2 can barely stand to show her Botoxed face, and vacations to exclusive hideaways with the mother-in-law from hell, she constantly wonders, "On what planet have I landed?"
After all, she's just a down-to-earth gal from suburbia who felt as if she'd landed in the middle of a fairy tale when she married Robert. He's handsome, rich, and—best of all—able to make her laugh, and she happily jumped headfirst into his world. But now Robert's lost his job, Lily hasn't lost her pregnancy weight, and their once-golden existence seems suddenly tarnished.
Desperate to regain her self-esteem, Lily begins writing essays about life among the rich and snobbish, which tosses her into the spotlight and in the path of social disaster. But as Lily navigates her way through the shark-infested waters of Manhattan society, she starts to rediscover her own place in the world—and how to regain what truly matters.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061451010 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 09/09/2008 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Gilding Lily
Chapter One
One and a half years earlier . . .
Sweeping up the main staircase of the Ludwig Collection, the Upper East Side cultural landmark and ultimate beneficiary of that evening's Spring Showers...themed fundraiser, Lily Grace managed to ruin what would have been a perfectly splendid entrance by stomping on the hem of her silk gown and falling down in the middle of the stairs. The dress, a sea green riot in airy chiffon, had been shipped directly off a Milan runway and delivered via messenger to her apartment that day, and in her haste to get to the party, she hadn't noticed the gown's perilously long hem.
Lily looked around, noting thankfully that her face plant had gone unobserved by the party guests and paparazzi milling about at the top of the stairs, and with her right hand gathered the excess material of the dress. She'd have to hold it up all night if she didn't want to take another tumble in front of tout le monde New York...which, of course, she most assuredly did not.
Proceeding more carefully this time up the white marble staircase, she made it into the Ludwig's second-floor ballroom without further incident, surveying the room, which had been elaborately decorated to reflect the evening's theme. Swaths of blue silk blanketed twenty-five round tables, each set with white candles, floral arrangements, and dinner service for ten; while a hundred potted trees draped with ropes of Austrian crystals, white Dendrobium orchids and fairy lights formed a natural border around the dining area. The room smelled expensively of narcissus, fresh cut grass, and French perfume.
As Lily maneuvered through the roomtoward Robert's table, she returned waves from a permatanned socialite who had recently posed in a bikini for the cover of Hamptons magazine (showing off a brand-new breast enlargement) and the daughter of a Caribbean rum exporter who was known as much for her tireless social climbing as she was for her not one but two gentleman walkers, who were themselves attached at the hip (and, apparently, to the idea that ascots were remotely fashionable). Next to them stood a contingent of South American bombshells, their tagalong hair stylists and makeup artists hovering nearby, and a clique of gossiping, half-drunk fashion publicists, all thin, all dressed in trendy sequined minidresses and platform heels.
Even though Lily had been on the gala scene for less than a year, she had already deduced what these evenings were all about. They weren't about charity (if she polled the room, probably only half the guests were aware of the cause their thousand-dollar-a-plate tickets were benefiting) and they weren't about romance (the men, at least those of the hetero variety, were entirely inconsequential) but about status, the preserving of it and the getting of it. The latter being the more interesting of the two. It was remarkable to Lily how being seen or, even better, photographed with the right people, in the right dress could transform a young woman from slender wallflower to hothouse diva within a fortnight.
Lily was well past fashionably late...the waiters were already clearing the striped bass and fennel gratin entrées from the tables...but Robert had told her over the phone not to worry. "Finish your work and then come as quick as you can," he'd said over the din of the cocktail hour. "But try to be here by dessert. I took a sneak peak at the menu and they're serving your favorite."
Profiteroles. She spotted another tuxedoed waiter threading through the room with a tray of the ice-cream-stuffed pastries, making her stomach gurgle with hunger. The last thing she'd eaten all day was a ham and cheese croissant from the Au Bon Pain in her office building. Then a Silicon Valley law firm declared bankruptcy, and all hell broke loose on the newsroom floor. By the time she'd filed her story and gotten out of the bureau, she'd had just enough time to wash her face, slap on some makeup, and slip into her dress before hijacking a taxi on Park Avenue and zooming uptown for the party.
She heard the machinations of a camera lens focusing and turned to see a slim, white-haired photographer holding his camera aloft. "A photo?" he asked, and Lily obliged with a quick nod, gently angling her left hip away from the camera while sucking in her stomach and holding her right arm slightly away from her side. Getting snapped with fat-looking upper arms was a monstrous no-no in this crowd.
It had taken her a while to master what she jokingly referred to as her "PPP: Perfect Party Pose"...the pictures from when she had first started dating Robert (and hadn't learned the benefits of snapping oneself with a Polaroid camera before stepping out for an evening) could be called unflattering at best...but she was a quick study, and by the time he proposed, she looked as if she'd been doing it for a lifetime, or at least a few years longer than the short six months of their courtship. Her pose was studied, but at least her smile was genuine, or so Lily reasoned. Many of the girls had taken to pouting like supermodels every time a camera lens trained on their pretty faces.
The news of Robert's proposal had risen more than a few eyebrows around town. Not only was he handsome, charming, and well educated, but he also had a pedigree few could match for snob appeal. His great-grandfather, himself an heir to a New York banking fortune, was an avid gardener, and while puttering around at his family's summer cottage, one of the storied seaside escapes on Newport's Bellevue Drive, he had invented Blue Water, a plant fertilizer. Robert's grandfather and father further expanded what was then a small family side business by opening a chain of successful garden supply stores across the country, and Robert, who had never trimmed a hedge or mulched a weed in his life, was raised in the opulent shadow of the money tree his forebears had planted years ago, as the once-humble Blue Water Garden Supply chain eclipsed even the old bank in profitability. When he chose Lily, a relative unknown from an upper-middle-class neighborhood of Nashville as his bride, everyone took notice.
Gilding Lily. Copyright © by Tatiana Boncompagni. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
What People are Saying About This
“A gawker-licious look at life inside the biting world of New York society. Juicy, gossipy, and ultimately redemptive, Guilding Lily is in a league with Nanny Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada.”
“A fun society read that will keep you intrigued in the rise and fall of its glossy characters.”
Only a true insider could dish…the way Tatiana Boncompagni has in this smartly written tale…”
“With crackling humor and spot-on detail, Boncompagni captures the rarified world of New York society—and the juggling act of modern motherhood.”
“Rivetingly readable, Gilding Lily gleefully exposes the secret underbelly of socialite life.”