Book Review: Man’s Best Friend | Alana B. Lytle
Well…this was quite a book! Alana B. Lytle’s Man’s Best Friend is a compelling story about a character who grows more unlikeable as the story progresses and offers a blistering social commentary of wealth, privilege, and poverty. Intense and clever!
What is Man’s Best Friend about?
Aspiring (and failing) actress El is thirty years old and is used to being a have-not in a world of haves. She grew up in a cramped Manhattan apartment with a single mother and her mother’s friend, sharing a room with her son. One year in her adolescence El attended a prestigious Manhattan private school on scholarship but surrounded by true wealth and elitism. Since that year, El has been starkly aware of how far her life is from ever being what her friends from that school get to experience.
Rather than leaving El with a strong work ethic and aspiration to create a life better than the one she had as a teenager, El experiences a bland apathy towards her life and what she feels she deserves. As an adult she surrounds herself with friends more like herself, but she’ll drop everything at the chance to spend time with her wealthy friends forged in that single year.
When El meets a Cambridge-educated, trust-fund man at a party with her old friends in the Hamptons, she sees the key to the life she feels she should have. And it may be hers for the taking, as not matter how poorly El treats Bryce, he’s smitten by her. As El leaves behind every shred of her life to nestle in the safe cocoon that Bryce’s money provides, she becomes less and less of an independent person and more like a show-pet that Bryce gets to parade around.
And when El learns something more sinister about Bryce’s life, she may be forced to face the consequences of her decision to give up everything for him. But maybe Bryce will be the one regretting everything…
What did I think?
This book took me on a ride! It starts out fairly standard—a somewhat entitled out-of-work actress has seen how the other half lives and can no longer be content with her life. Nor does she even try to make her life anything other than what it is. Sometimes El observes her “friend” and roommate, Crystal—a fellow struggling actress—still aspiring to make her dreams of acting come true. Crystal is hopeful and optimistic, and she never judges El for dropping acting and all other aspirations and just existing in her job at a bakery with no life plans. Crystal’s worst crime, in El’s opinion, seems to be how much she wants to be El’s friend.
This is just a glimpse of El, and trust me this is only scratching the surface. As the book goes on, El prioritizes any friend she deems of higher status over those who may be closer to her, less judgmental, more reliable, and actually like El. Not only is El a terrible friend, she’s an all-around selfish and lazy person. Am I convincing you to avoid this book? Don’t!
El is written that way intentionally, and trust me you don’t need to—nor are you expected to—like El as a person. Any time the reader may begin to feel sympathy for El, such as learning about her troubled upbringing or her financial struggles, it’s quickly overpowered by how apathetic and entitled El is.
Her single year at a private school introduced her to two girls who she believes herself to be friends with, Anna and Julia. El will drop everything to hang out with them, though as we learn, their friendship is shallow and riddled with unhealthy competition. One of the things the reader begins to realize about El’s friendship with Julia and Anna is that the competition seems to be largely one-sided. El gloats in her head about being named the second hottest girl at school, while Anna was much lower. When she has a chance to steal a man from Anna in what El views as payback, it becomes clear that Anna may not have even realized the offense El perceived from her as a teenager. El is retaliating against someone who didn’t know there was a problem.
I found being inside El’s head endlessly fascinating. She’s such a deliciously unlikeable person, and everything she does in the book is completely selfish and centered entirely around what she does or doesn’t want, and what she is or isn’t willing to give to another person. Her relationship with the wealthy, Cambridge-educated Bryce is bizarre at best. Bryce is a lovesick puppy when it comes to El, and El can barely stand him. She’s completely aware of when she’s leading him on, but over time El sees how she may have given up some of the power she held at first.
Bryce checks up on her constantly. El only realizes at a certain point that he doesn’t appreciate if she checks in on him. She missed this predominantly because she doesn’t care enough about him to care what he is doing. Bryce is quite a ride as a character. Initially he seems so sappy and delusional, but it turns out El isn’t the only one with a dark side. El allows Bryce to turn her more and more into a show dog who is expected to always be there for him, and in exchange he fawns over her and takes care of everything.
The social commentary is blazing hot throughout, and the ending is powerful and sharp. Lytle has found a way to take the poor person climbing into the wealthy social sphere and taking advantage of those who have privilege by nature of birth, and offers a new and entirely fresh take on the story. El throws away every real relationship she has, first for Julia and Anna, and eventually for Bryce. Bryce isn’t who you think he is. There is a lot to learn about Bryce and his true nature, but the story remains firmly about El and her self-centered entitlement.
I never was rooting for El, but at the same time I found the way her story ended to be so perfect that it almost turned my mind around. The closing scene is one I’ve thought about many times since finishing the book. I am glad I stuck with this book after finding the opening chapter bizarre. It ends up being stylistically and tonally unlike the entire rest of the book, and I enjoyed everything else immensely.
If you were a fan of Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier, you’ll love this absurd, dark, twisted book! I highly recommend doing the audiobook. Adina Verson expertly executes El’s droll, selfish voice and meandering thoughts. She brings the delightfully horrible El and her story to life.
Thank you to Putnam Books and Penguin Random House for my copy. Opinions are my own.
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