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pebblysand 's review for:
funny
informative
fast-paced
i found this book through interviews of eliza filby which were recommended to me by my tiktok algorithm, which seems to know me better than i know myself as this was an absolute five stars.
i will caveat this review by saying that whilst we were born in different countries (i am french), the author’s background and mine have a lot in common. upper middle class, professional, educated women raised by working class parents (born early 50s) who “got rich” through what i call “boomer circumstances”. unlike the author, i was however raised by a single mother (who therefore was also the de facto breadwinner) but she definitely also fit the “cool mum” boomer description. so, that is possibly why this book particularly spoke to me.
that said, i thought this book was truly fascinating in a lot of ways. firstly, i think it does a really good job explaining the overall dynamics of this inheritocracy, and its many advantages for the beneficiaries, as well as its challenges. the chapter on elder care was, in that way, particularly interesting, and something i myself dread to think about, especially as an only child to a single parent, who now lives in a different country.
i also thought one thing that was particularly interesting to me, as a “younger” millennial (born ‘93), was reading about the author’s university experience (and that of her contemporaries). that is one thing i’ve also always noticed, talking to my “elder” millennial friends - how startlingly different their university experience (and their 20s) were overall. they - like the author - seem to have more or less enjoyed ten years of free roam, broke-but-not-poor, artsy, carefree, “cool” experiences whereas we, the 90s-ers who graduated high school post-2008 at the height of the financial crisis, went into uni to be reminded everyday that we would never get a job, never make money, that no one wanted us, and that frankly, if our elders were already at risk of losing their livelihoods, we shouldn’t complain about never getting one. we spent years stuck in dead end unpaid “internships” (which obviously reinforced the inheritocracy) - this even for those of us who opted for more “lucrative” degrees like law or finance - and only recently found our footing. it’s always very interesting to me to see how even within the same social class and same “generation”, experiences can differ.
another point i thought was fascinating was the whole chapter on boomer focus on education. this actually triggered a conversation with my mother who was IN SHOCK when she found out so few millennials would push their children to university. interestingly, the author puts this down to the english education system, but my mother is french, so i think it runs deeper than that. i do think for a lot of working class boomers, education was something they “lacked” and had to acquire later in life, which marked that class demarcation to them. (honourable mention here to my father here who *was* upper class and once told me “your mother is one of the smartest people i know, she would have done much better in life, if she’d been “born better”.”) i think boomers also feel like education is something you can “always fall back on”, whereas our generation seen the shortcomings of that assumption in modern times. i also think (this isn’t mentioned in the book, but something that occurred to me) that maybe a lot of millennials have felt “trapped” by degrees and resulting professional careers they chose at a very young age, having to later spend more money and time to retrain. this only gets harder as more time passes.
a lot of other points really resonated with me: the duality of getting on with your parents/depending on that love economically, the way women seem to be more willing to depend on their parents than on their partners these days (something that i definitely identify with and had never quite examined before), the “i’m going to switzerland” boomer answer to elder care, the fear that working class parents seem to have that their children will not be able to live as “comfortably” as they did (my mum once said “when we had kids, we really didn’t think things were going to get worse”), etc. overall, this was a fascinating read.
i will add in response to the criticism i’m seeing from others: the authors level of privilege and that of her interviewees is literally acknowledged at every page, and if you think she “didn’t acknowledge it until the epilogue”, you haven’t read this book or lack reading comprehension. it couldn’t be *more* acknowledged, it’s literally the whole point of the book. i also think the criticism that this book doesn’t outline/investigate the consequences of this system on the working class is a bit unfair. firstly, those consequences can be inferred by anyone with a brain. secondly, the working class isn’t the topic of this book. there are other books on this topic. just like, for that matter, the actual aristocracy and *their* means of wealth holding/transferring isn’t the topic of this book either. this book is about the middle and upper middle classes and their current situation, which is an equally interesting topic, essential to understanding the layers of the world we live in.
overall, a five stars for me, and a book i very much enjoyed reading, even though i’m not usually one for nonfiction. also, complete side note but the author fast-tracking into marriage and motherhood at 36 gave me, a single, “meandering” 31 year old, *some* hope haha!