PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE
A Novel
by Elizabeth Topp
Enter the rarefied world of society doyenne Bambi Von Bismark (“Kissy” to her friends, “the Mrs.” to her employees). Watch as she travels effortlessly between her vacation home in Aspen, to her palatial Park Avenue apartment, to her Hamptons home (in the off season!) and back. Anna has been Kissy’s assistant for years, long past the time her family and friends thought she might get what they would consider a real job. And then there’s Anna’s longtime boyfriend Adrian, the inventor of an app called FoodBlast, meant to help feed the homeless, Only he has recently shuttered the nonprofit to take a job at luxury goods purveyor LVMH, which Anna can’t help but feel is a betrayal of their shared socially-conscious values. And, to her surprise, he has also started to talk wistfully about the future, when the two of them might have “adult things” like a mortgage, a baby, and a rodent-free life.
As she struggles to gain a toehold in the art world, and to decide what she wants in her personal life, Anna’s Type A personality nonetheless makes her a perfect assistant for Kissy. She’s organized and almost frighteningly efficient, with an excellent memory and an expert note-taking system that allows her to instantly find the name of “that wine we had that one time” or to talk the Von Bismark’s teenage daughter out of trying to borrow the G-7 for a weekend trip to Jamaica or to persuade the family accountant to release an emergency $10,000 to grease the palms of a few Colombian immigration officials in order to get their chef home from vacation a few days early. And Anna knows she will need all of these skills and more when her boss informs her that she’s to be honored at the social event of the season, the illustrious New York Opera Ball. Suddenly, Anna finds herself juggling this honor, which will only cost the Von Bismarks $12.4 million, trying to talk the Mrs. out of accidentally committing a tiny bit of tax fraud, and dealing with Mr. Von Bismark’s sudden and mysterious “security issues,” all while simultaneously trying to mount her very first art show.
Unfolding like an Upstairs, Downstairs for twenty-first century Manhattan society, PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE expertly chronicles--and hilariously skewers--the lives of the city’s elite, through the eyes of one fictional socialite and the staff, led by the plucky Anna, charged with making her life run smoothly. The book will transport readers to a world they will never want to leave, and we hope that you will assign it for review. We will reach out soon to discuss the possibilities.
Elizabeth Topp penned her first short story in the second grade and has been writing ever since. A graduate of the Dalton school, Harvard College, and the Columbia School of the Arts, Topp coauthored her first book, Vaginas: An Owners Manual, with her gynecologist mother while she worked as a private assistant, a job she still holds. Topp lives in the same Manhattan apartment from her childhood with her partner, Matthew; their daughter, Anna; and their cat Stripes.
Website: www.LizTopp.com
Twitter: @LizTopp
#FirstLine - Park Avenue cooperatives announced their inverse relationship to reality first with the lobby's temperature.
I love this this book. It was a delight to be taken inside the world of the rich and enjoyed the human aspect of the book. We are all longing for the same things...friendship, love, connection, happiness; all of the things! It was just a really easy, fun quick read!
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“Topp’s fizzy debut novel hilariously pulls the curtain back on what it’s like to be the assistant to an über-rich Park Avenue matron. Topp leverages her behind-the-scenes view of the Bizmarks’ milieu and Anna’s trade for some entertaining, biting satire. The author’s gifts for humor and drama make this an engaging lark.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Readers won't want to put down Topp's debut, which offers a peek into the world of the wild demands of the wealthiest of the wealthy. Anna struggles to stay one stiletto step ahead of the game, along with the rest of the characters who make up the Von Bizmark staff, including a distractingly fashionable second assistant and a chef who uses ingredients that are not always legal, who do all they can to keep ‘The Mrs.’ happy.”
— Booklist
“Readers who enjoy a glimpse into the outrageous lives of the one percent will find plenty to enjoy in the deviously decadent characters, exorbitant displays of wealth, and tongue-in-cheek humor… A fun…escape into moneyed madness.”
— Kirkus Reviews
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A Conversation with Liz Topp,
Author of PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE
Q: What’s this book really “about?” What would you like people to take away?
A: I want readers to laugh when they read this book! Out loud! A few times! When I was writing, my intention was to share the inner sanctum of a different world, but what I couldn’t have known was how much this book could serve as an escape back to a time when frivolousness was still possible. When we giggled with our multiple work colleagues, close together and wearing not masks but makeup, where money still flowed freely and we cared to attend parties with hundreds of strangers in a large room.
On a deeper level, many of us used to be preoccupied by the question of whether women “can have it all,” but I think it’s more interesting and relevant to wonder whether women can ‘be it all.’ In the book as in real life, the female characters play multiple roles: artist and assistant, wife and employer, housekeeper and single mom. Anna’s central question is whether she can truly be an actual artist while working as an assistant. The two roles undercut one another, which makes it difficult to fully succeed at either. Remember those endearing images of JKF in the Oval Office with Caroline and Jack underfoot? I imagine a different reaction would have met President Hilary Clinton with a diaper-clad grandchild under the Resolute Desk. Somehow it’s never been a problem for men, but for women it can be a challenge to unify their various identities.
Q: How does one become a private assistant? What’s the difference between a personal and a private assistant?
A: There are specialized headhunters for big private office jobs, but like basically everything, it helps immeasurably to know someone. These seats tend to get handed down. I was bequeathed my first PA job by a friend of a friend who was leaving town. Obviously, trust is a big factor in hiring decisions and a personal connection always makes that easier to establish.
Since I started, I’ve seen several spin-offs of the original ‘Personal Assistant’ title including Private Assistant, Special Assistant, and, for the really service-oriented insanely wealthy, a Chief of Staff to manage them. These jobs are bespoke: as varied in the critical details as the employers themselves, but with a significant amount of overlap. Private Assistants are a shade more intimate than Personal Assistants; an employer used to say, “We have no secrets, you and I.” A Special Assistant is just as the name implies: perhaps someone who only handles gifts, travel, or events within a family office. I once interviewed for a job where the only tasks were to purchase presents for the employers’ associates and ensure he had all the DVDs he wanted in the right house for the weekend. 15 years ago the starting annual salary for that seat was $90,000.
Q: What’s the craziest thing that’s happened on the job?
A: Years ago, I joined an organization called New York Celebrity Private Assistants, mostly to trade gossip. I imagined I had found a group of people with whom I could speak freely given our common sense of understanding and confidentiality, as well as a shared interest in the private details of famous peoples’ lives. But once I got there, I discovered that it’s not just that no one talks about fight club outside of fight club--no one was going to fight either.
I can share a story from my first post, because it was my employer’s favorite too. I was young—it was my first job! Every home office of significance tends to have some old-school contact management system. Whatever is current now, rewind two decades. Anyway, my employer was doing a show in New York and wanted to invite Bob Kerrey, President at that time of the New School. So I called up Kerrey’s office and someone eagerly took down all the details.
I was in a cab headed downtown when my (first-ever) cell phone rang, and my employer said, “Hey there, couldn’t help but notice that you left the database up on your screen and it looks like you called John Kerry. You didn’t call John Kerry, who is running for President, and invite him to my show on Super Tuesday did you? Because that would make me look a little silly.”
But I had done exactly that! “See, Liz,” my employer patiently explained, “Not only will John Kerry not come to my show, but now he will call me and I will have to fly out to somewhere hugely inconvenient and stump for him.” And he did!
Q: It’s popular to vilify the rich but you seem to come out at the other extreme. What do you think about excessive wealth and growing income disparities?
A: It’s lazy to villainize any one group of people. I believe the rich act the same way any random group of people given a ton of money would behave, particularly once they realize how much everyone they come in contact with including friends and family want then to get their hands on their newfound fortune. It’s true that rich people don’t like paying taxes—who does?
However, the super wealthy need to pay a lot more taxes and as a society we have to do more to get more people moving up the socioeconomic ladder. Not enough voters agree with me to make that a reality, but maybe the pandemic will change that. The last gilded age resulted in labor unions, as well as some glorious relics. Will we one day tour the great estates of Southampton the way we visit the Gold Coast of Long Island’s landmarked homes today?
Q: Characters wonder throughout, if the very wealthy are just like the rest of us. Are they?
A: The vast majority of rich people—those who have earned at least some of their money through work, who have at least one or two straight-talkers in their midst, and who have some sense of purpose in life, no matter how vague—are like the rest of us.
The generationally mega rich who won’t have a concern about money for a century… No, of course they are not like us because they assume everyone is mostly interested in their money (and they are mostly right), they cannot share many of our most common preoccupations, and the angst they do experience is unique. I met the son of a scion who was just completely incapacitated by the limitlessness of his options. It seems dreamy to have every door open to you, and yet no matter which road he walked down, he’d never be as successful as his father. And it made him sad in a way I could never understand. As an employer of mine loved to remark, “The very rich are very odd.”
Q: This book already seems to represent a very different time than the one we are currently living through. How do you see ‘high society’ adapting to new realities?
A: First let me say, I have no idea. I suspect we’re about to bear witness to a great global reorganization that will fundamentally alter our world in ways we cannot anticipate. Will philanthropy continue on as the main revenue engine for American cultural institutions or will we shift to a more socialist European model? Will that make large splashy fundraising galas not only undesirable from a health standpoint but unnecessary from a financial one? Maybe!
It’s hard to imagine returning to a world in which immense, indoor social gatherings are as commonplace as they used to be. Still, high society will always and forever exist no matter if or how we try to stamp it out and they will continue to congregate. Perhaps instead of black-tie balls, the chicest parties will all be highly selective unmasked gatherings where all the attendees are screened for infections on the spot. In addition to private planes, perhaps we’ll start seeing entire sterilized VIP international airports. Personal staff will be selected for their antibodies instead of their experience. I imagine in the long run the lifestyles of the rich and famous will shift very little, but rest assured they will feel all these changes as tremendously painful inconveniences. In that way, we are all alike.
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