The Party

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I began to realise that if I never achieved anything outwardly ever again, I would still exist. The voice in my head is not who I am.” If you can remove your ego from a process, then there really isn't any difference between success and failure. They're just both parts of a process. And that you shouldn't look at a failure as something terrible, it just is what it is and you shouldn't look at success as something great, it just is what it is.”

La historia está contada en capítulos alternos con las voces de Martin y Lucy, es muy ágil y de lectura adictiva, con una critica muy acerada a las clases altas británicas que tratan a los miembros de otras clases inferiores como meros comparsas o utilizándolos para sus intereses. Being honest and publicly vulnerable is not the only way to be, but it's certainly a brave and deeply humane way to be.”Si papá y yo nos preocupamos, nunca fue porque no tengamos tiempo para ti o porque no te queramos muchísimo. Eiin??

The Party starts at the end of a story that began in public school some 30 years previously when we meet Martin Gilmour an outsider who wins a scholarship to Burtonbury School, he doesn’t wear the right attire or speak with the right kind of accent but then he meets the dazzling and wealthy Ben Fitzmaurice, and gets a taste of his exclusive world. Soon Martin is enjoying the high life at the Fitzmaurice family’s estate and becomes an extended family member. Ben's 40th birthday party full of glitz and glamour is the venue to be seen at but things take a nasty turn. Estar rodeado de gente así, gente rica, privilegiada, guapa, egoísta, no es bueno para el alma. Piensan en sí mismos todo al tiempo que fingen ser todo generosidad. El resto de nosotros no les importamos. No es una maldad consciente, tan solo la incapacidad de imaginar cómo son las vidas de los demás". Martin Gilmour proviene de un entorno desfavorecido, pero gracias a su amistad con Ben Fitzmaurice tiene un pie dentro de un mundo donde el dinero y el poder ancestrales fluyen entre familias con apellidos sonoros. Martin queda hechizado por Ben y su entorno, y confiesa: Martin gradually inveigles his way into the Fitzmaurice home as a proxy for Ben’s dead brother. The relationship is formalised when Martin takes the rap for Ben following a serious accident while they are at Cambridge University. Martin marries Lucy and husband and wife tell the story in alternating first-person narratives. The novel is framed by Martin’s interview in a police station following some unknown-but-terrible event at Ben’s lavish 40th birthday bash, the eponymous party. As the train pressed on, I realised that my life was in the process of taking a different direction, plotted according to a new constellation. Because, although I didn’t know it yet, I was about to meet Ben and nothing would ever be the same again.I got very sweaty during a Zoom call earlier. I fail to return phone calls and texts a lot. That makes me worry I’m a failure as a friend. Any time I get a negative review, I remind myself that there are people out there who don’t like cheese Martin - the protagonist was interesting in his slightly creepy devotion, but it would have been nice to get a clear sense of where his motives where coming from. Hints were made one way but reveals went another, and ultimately I couldn't make up my mind about him. Warning: There are two very graphic, gratuitous descriptions of animal cruelty in this book. I jumped past both of them. La narración For so long, we woman have turned our anger inwards, redirecting it towards ourselves and allowing it to manifest as shame. We have told ourselves, instead, that we are sad or hormonal or stressed, but these have been placeholder emotions. And for so long we have been encouraged to do this by a misogynistic culture that realises female anger is dangerous not because it is the product of mental imbalance but because it is fuel. Female anger is power.”