Satire but also a good look at how defining your life by identity politics really isolates you. Karen is a pretty unsympathetic character that at least somewhat starts to grow up and move away from identity politics but then again not really. The adults are so shadow while the poor kids are just chess pieces in the game of identity politics. And it doesn't matter which school. ( )

I got off to a slow start with this one; in the first chapter, the relentless relating of backstory in a flat, dry, third-person voice annoyed me so much I almost didn't continue. But then I picked it up again the next day and started really enjoying it.

There have been quite a few novels and articles over the last few years about "Park Slope moms." I honestly cannot even picture their world or sympathize with their concerns. But Karen's concerns about her own attitudes toward race and class really struck a chord with me. I found the constant internal observations about her own hypocrisy spot-on, relatable, and funny; I didn't find her particularly unlikable or annoying, just incredibly blind to her own privilege, which is really the point of the book, I think.

Where it fell apart for me is when she starts doing stupid, risky, and even illegal things without getting caught or suffering any major consequences. She steals someone's mail and uses it to transfer her child to another school without even considering that the person whose mail she's stolen might be known to the school (and they are! And the office doesn't notice!). The PTA president, who is really concerned about where people live, hasn't checked the new family's address and discovered that IT'S HER OWN ADDRESS. Karen texts the guy she's having an affair with and mixes personal comments in with her work-related email (presumably from her work email account) and doesn't get discovered. She loses a major donor after spending the evening flirting with a fairly minor donor and isn't even talked to about it. And then when it all comes out, nobody presses charges or divorces her or fires her. She basically goes back to life as it was, with new friends and a better attitude. The only consequence she suffers is guilt.
And maybe that's the point--that's also the only consequence she suffers for her classist,
racist hypocrisy.

I've read reviews that call this book "hilarious" or "skewering." I thought it was more of a wry poke in the stomach than a hilarious skewering; maybe that's because I live a thousand miles from Karen's world physically, and a couple million perceptually. But even though the inequality curve isn't quite as steep where I live, many of us are still very aware of it, and are conscious and conflicted about our own place on it. That made this an uncomfortable read in many ways--but that's not necessarily a bad thing. ( )

This is a satirical novel about 45-year-old Karen, a white upper-middle-class liberal whose ideals about class and race and how she can better the lives of those less fortunate than her come into conflict with her desires to get ahead in the world. The result is an engaging and amusing look inside the head of a person who finds herself at odds because of conflicting desires and goals.

Karen and her husband and daughter live in oh-so-hip Brooklyn, in a somewhat diverse neighborhood. Her daughter attends what Karen proudly considers an integrated public school, where most of Ruby's classmates are of different skin color and class level from her. This makes Karen happy as a bleeding-heart liberal, for one because she wants her daughter to be exposed to and become friendly with, and even develop the right attitudes about, kids who are different from her, and for another because it assuages her own white guilt at her upper-middle-class and secure two-parent family status.

Conflicts arise, however, when Karen finds real-life problems getting in the way of pie-in-the-sky ideals of class and interracial unity. For example, one of her daughter's classmates starts physically attacking his classmates. Karen's noblesse oblige desire to have this boy, Jayyden, stay in the class and reap the benefit of Karen's munificence and her daughter's friendship is in conflict with Karen's fear for her daughter's safety, while at the same time feeling guilty about such supposed selfishness. In addition, she finds herself questioning her every comment, action and motive, in interacting with others not of her class or race, such as when her daughter's friend and her mother comes over for a playdate. That scene gets to the heart of Karen's dilemma in life, as every interaction with the mother is picked apart as Karen walks on eggshells, worrying about the political correctness or lack thereof of everything she says to the mother. "Will she think I'm racist? Will she think I'm trying too hard not to be racist? Am I really racist for thinking she'll think I'm racist?" is the kind of line Karen's thinking takes in this scene, and many others.

This makes for an amusing look inside the head of someone whose heart is in the right place, but who can't help but make misstep after misstep, because after all, in this world of heightened class and race awareness, is any comment or action really politically correct? In a world in which a serious article can be written decrying white girls' wearing of hoop earrings as "appropriating" black culture, Karen's struggles highlight the difficulty all well-meaning people have in dealing with the issues of race and class today. The result here is a very interesting and amusing character.

The plot thickens when issues of a failing marriage and trying to get ahead in her job -- appropriately, as a fundraiser for a food charity -- complicate things. When Karen moves her daughter to a whiter and higher-class school, more conflicts arise with the parent body there and lead her to take actions she cannot defend, all in the hopes of moving her family upward, which of course runs counter to her belief and value systems, which makes for more (amusing) internal conflict, although the actions Karen takes stretches credulity to some extent.

The novel gives a too-pat view of class and race, painting the lower-class families with more of a sympathetic brush than the higher-class families receive. (Poor = disadvantaged and wronged. Rich = callous and selfish.)

Overall, though, I enjoyed it. Thank you to the author and publisher for a review copy. ( )

White woman privilege alert! The disturbing part of the unsympathetic narrator, Karen, is that the reader cannot divine the author's feelings for her. Although they are doing well enough, Karen is concerned when several of her Brooklyn friends pull their children from an integrated neighborhood school to send them to one with more white kids. Even though she internally challenges her own racism, it doesn't stop her from lying to move her own daughter Ruby to the whiter school, without including her passive preoccupied husband in the decision. Karen continues making stupid decisions throughout the book. However, there is fine humor in her internal and external responses to other overbearing mothers. But no justification for the too-neatly-wrapped up ending.

"Karen had found that the minutiae of early-year parenting was fascinating for the exact moment you were living it, after which it became, quite possibly, the most boring subject on earth." ( )

Lucinda Rosenfeld's CLASS features New York, Karen Kipple as she struggles to balance the demands of motherhood and career, always convinced that she was shortchanging one or the other.

Married for ten years and for the last five Karen had been the director of development for a small non-profit devoted to tackling childhood hunger in the US. For the past two years, she had been trying to write an oped which she hoped one day to publish in a major newspaper, about the relationship between nutrition and school readiness.

Matt, her husband is also a career activist in the nonprofit sector and she is always worried about Ruby, her eight-year-old daughter’s education. She encourages her former lawyer husband to quit his job and work with low-income people to assist their housing needs.

Karen had enrolled her daughter at Betts, aware that it lacked the reputation for academic excellence of other schools nearby, but Ruby would be exposed to children who were less privileged than herself. Even though the white population of the school hovered around 25%. Being in the minority in what she had chosen. However, was he sacrificing her education? Diversity or inferior education?

She had always aspired to a life of making a difference and helping those less fortunate than herself. She tried to live in accordance with the politics and principals, which of course included the notion that public education was a force for good and that without racially and economically integrated school, an equal opportunity couldn’t exist.

Ruby was smart and a voracious reading and life should be good. Karen, an advocate for non-food additives and chemicals as well as diversity. She has a nice condo, hubby, and daughter, Karen’s life seemed to be good in New York; however, she is unhappy.

“Karen’s complex and contradictory relationship to eating had also grown more in the last few years, along with weight, teeth, and marriage—somehow become a dividing line between the social classes with the Earth Day — esque ideals of the 1960s having acquired snob appeal, and the well-off and well-educated increasingly buying “natural” and “fresh” and casting aspersions on those who didn’t.”

Then when a classmate of Ruby’s transfers out of Betts to a more privileged school of white students, all of Karen’s earlier thoughts and commitments, quickly vanished. Her husband wants a divorce because she enrolled Ruby in a new school without telling him.

Following the lead, she moves Ruby and then begins an affair with a rich guy, Clay, among other things. More lies. Her emotions are all over the board. Karen is torn between social classes, seeing the poor living in shelters and the rich and their superficial ways. Hypocrisy. Guilt.

She was capable of paying hundreds of dollars for an espresso machine from Italy, Karen had a deeply ingrained cheap streak as well, which caused her to do things like go to the library and photocopy the crossword puzzle from the Sunday paper rather than pay for a subscription.

Rosenfeld kicks butt and puts it all out there. With keen insights, raw honesty, a brutal portrayal ---the truth of our unequal society in urban America. With humor and highly-charged topics, the author hits the bull's eye, with CLASS.

I especially enjoyed the wide range of topics from privilege, class, identity, entitlement, education, politics, domestic, marriage, social economics, philanthropy—to ethical dilemmas, the author does not miss a beat in this delightful satire.

A tale of one woman’s struggle between the madness of liberal and reality. The lesson liberals need to learn is that despite their arrogance, they do not have the power to alter reality. From liberals to progressive—is equality among human race the exception, and inequality the norm?

Much to like here whether you are a modern-day urban parent, grandparent, or single. Smart, witty, engaging, absorbing, and thought-provoking! The hardcover was stunning with a perfect fitting cover. An ideal choice for book clubs and further discussions.

A special thank you to Little Brown & Co., Goodreads Giveaway, and NetGalley for a complimentary reading copy, in exchange for an honest review.

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