A soirée was held this past week at the historic Lotos Club, in honor of author Elizabeth Topp’s (author of Perfectly Impossible) newest book release, City People.
The event, hosted by philanthropist and former Bride’s magazine editor-in-chief, Barbara Tober, was attended by authors Nicola Kraus and Laurie Gelman, influencer Emily Sumner, and Dr. Nicholas Perricone among many more. The Lotos Club was fitting for the occasion—not only because it is considered a legendary literary hotspot apt for a book party, but also its Upper East Side location, the same setting where City People takes place.
If you enjoy following the lives of the financial elite interspersed with family secrets à la Big Little Lies and Succession, this time with a New York City private school twist, City People is the book for you. Following the unexpected suicide of their friend, a group of mothers are left to question what pushed their seemingly perfect friend over the edge and in turn, question their own lives and the choices they make, not only for themselves, but for their children. The chapters switch between the perspectives of the six main characters: there is Vic, a single mom and author who has now lost her closest friend, Bhavna, a type-A makeup executive who will stop at nothing to get her son into the school of her dreams, Kara, the stay-at-home mom who’s dealt with suicide before, Penelope and Amy, a business-duo that must now decide between their bottom-line and their families, and Chandice, an ex-corporate lawyer battling breast cancer while the concept of mortality looms closer now more than ever.
City People is the second novel under Topp’s belt and luckily for us, she provided some insight onto what went on within the creative process. For Elizabeth, the novel’s plot, although fictious, was born of two real-life events that hit close to home.
“The first was the death by suicide of my very first mommy friend and the second was the diversity, equity and inclusion reckoning that roiled New York City private schools a few years ago, so I took those two real life things and wed them together in a fictional narrative. But the thing that really binds them is that the same lesson applies to both. We’re so busy as city people you have to really show up with your authentic self and spend with the people and the ideas you care about.”
This is not the first time Elizabeth has borrowed from reality to create fiction. Her first novel, Perfectly Impossible, follows Anna, a high-achieving personal assistant who dreams of being an artist, a role Elizabeth is familiar with having worked as a personal assistant to Barbara Tober for over twenty years. When asked how she finds time to write between work and motherhood, she shares, “I write three days a week and the whole key for me is to wake up, go right to the desk, and start typing first thing before I can be distracted by anything. The most important thing has to happen first in the day for it to happen for me, and that’s basically it, and I write two thousand words a day three days a week. That’s the goal.” As for when she encounters writer’s block? “I find that when I don’t want to work on a particular part of the story, I just go to the part that is interesting to me, even if it is forward in time. Instead of trying to figure out how am I going to get to all the characters from A to B, I just go to B and write that scene and then later on I find you don’t even miss the part that was tedious to write anyway.” She concludes the conversation with one last phrase of wisdom and a laugh. “If it’s boring to write it will be boring to read!”
The night concluded with a toast from the event’s host, Barbara Tober congratuling Elizabeth on her success followed by Elizabeth’s speech, expressing her gratitude to her team, guests, and readers. At the end of the night guests were given giftbags containing hardcover copies of City People and a stylish gray baseball cap donning the title, “CITY PERSON.” City People is available at Barnes & Noble, Target, and Amazon. To learn more about Elizabeth, follow her Instagram and visit her website, www.liztopp.com.
Photography credit: Patrick McMullan