The old woman had this evening’s lox wrapped in yesterday’s news. And there are some of working-class New Yorkers looking down, too. It’s such a perfect description of the class gap. But an assistant comes from a fine home, attends Smith College, and lands her position when her mother happens to be seated beside the publisher in chief at a dinner party. A secretary exchanges her labor for a living wage. That’s the difference between being a secretary and an assistant. So as I read I kept highlighting these wonderful descriptive passages, usually descriptions of working-class New York looking up. Rules of Civility is a manners novel, in which our protagonist, Katie Kontent, basically knows she’s in a manners novel.
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