“Growing up he’d said it again and again. She needed to be twice as good to get half as much. He was right, she knew, but she resented it.” Meet Jess, one of the more unusual protagonists of millennial fiction, a black woman in her 20s who works in the male-dominated world of investment banking.
Heeding the above advice from her father, Jess lives alone in a small apartment in New York, works ridiculously long hours for Goldman Sachs, has an app on her phone that counts her substantial earnings, which are still nowhere near enough to pay off her student loans. Money isn’t her only issue. Originally from a single-parent family in Nebraska, Jess’s college years and subsequent move to the city have crystallised for her the dire state of race relations and racial inequality in the US.
Enter Josh, a white, relatively privileged colleague who Jess has known since college, where their fractious relationship largely consisted of intense arguments played out in front of other students and bemused lecturers. Josh believes class to be America’s biggest social and political issue, Jess thinks it’s race. Also: they’re very clearly attracted to each other. When Jess joins Goldman, where Josh has already made a name for himself as a maths whizz, the stage is set for an enemies-to-lovers romance storyline with a very modern flavour: “Love conquers all, except geography, and history, and contemporary sociopolitical reality.”
Everything’s Fine, Cecilia Rabess’s debut novel, spans an interesting and tumultuous period in recent American history: from the election of Obama in 2008, to the rise of Trump eight years later. Jess’s character arc is set against this backdrop, which brings depth to the will-they-won’t-they dynamic of the plot. There are state-of-the-nation overtones to the book, in a way that resembles the personal-political writing of AM Homes.
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Other authors that come to mind, not least for the dry millennial tone and ironic title, include Naoise Dolan, Kiley Reid and Sally Rooney. The latter’s blunt, clever style of time-stamping her chapters proves similarly effective in Rabess’s book: “Two weeks later; back in New York.” Curtis Sittenfeld’s recent novel Romantic Comedy is another touchstone, though the investment banking world of Everything’s Fine is fresher and more compelling, loaded with brash characters and high-stakes scenarios in the vein of Lena Dunham’s TV series Industry.
Rabess previously worked at Google and as an associate at Goldman Sachs. Her non-fiction has featured in McSweeney’s, among other places. Everything’s Fine was acquired by Picador after an 11-way auction, which gives some indication of the author’s innovative approach to the marriage plot trope. Much of her book is a joy to read: snappy, intelligent, addictive – perfect for summer.
There is sharp humour in the character descriptions – “He reminded Jess of a stock photograph, not terrible in itself but somehow suggesting a complete lack of internal conflict. He looked like what a fifth grader might come up with if asked to draw a ‘man’, all even lines and uncomplicated symmetry” – and in the jaunty, electrically charged dialogue. Matching each other in brains and wit, the pair have a lovely, almost musical call-and-response, even if the dialectical parsing can occasionally feel more like debate club than real life.
As with all plotlines that hinge on delayed gratification – Rabess is particularly good on longing and desire – the pace somewhat slackens after the midway point when Jess and Josh get together, a small point in an engaging novel. The world of investment banking is brilliantly detailed, with a clear sense of the hierarchies and hideous personalities: “The traders are loud and potty mouthed and wear hideous pinstripe suits. The investment bankers, on the other hand, are nasty, but humourless.” Jess is a suitable narrator for calling out the nonsense, an outsider who is full of pluck and mordant comebacks that eventually get her in trouble.
Both central characters are well drawn, a feat considering that Josh isn’t afforded a narrative voice of his own. Both have intelligent, coherent points to contribute to their ongoing debates, a thorough interrogation of ideas that feels real and earned. Rabess has created a supercharged, cerebral romantic comedy with characters who say things like, “the relationship between intelligence and success is disproportionate and highly non-linear”, while arguing about unconscious bias training or power law distribution.
If this makes the book sound heavy, it is to the author’s credit that she wears the subject matter lightly. Everything’s Fine is a vibrant and authentic take on the age-old best-of-frenemies storyline. “There is no judgment in love,” her sage-like father says in a moving scene late in the narrative. For Jess and Josh, that means trying to see the value in what they have in common rather than what keeps them apart.
