Anyone who has worked in the hospitality game massaging and negotiating client’s egos of the uber riche will relish and wince, even recoil at the accuracy and intensity in this novel by Jess Ho, who debuted her book Raised by Wolves which was authentic, darkly humorous and often uncomfortably real. PEOPLE WITH MONEY tailgates the doorway between wealth and culture, in particular how fiercely the people on both sides of it, yearn to walk through it.
Ho’s story is peppered with recognisable hallmarks of the restaurant scene, rich with the vibrancy and energy that the author confesses, hand cupping her mouth, that some of her observations in the fine dining scenes could make her liable for defamation. The story fleshes out Amy Chan, a POC artist and seller of luxury fashion and octane-high priced wines, a broke, hedonist, queer and non binary, twenty-something, who is tired and trying her best.
Edward— white, older, a CEO— coasts through life like a shark swimming in alcohol and generational wealth, but is thwarted by his suspicion that people might notice how drunk and lonely he really is. Amy has spent most of her working life serving people like Edward and his family, who aren’t a puzzle to solve, or an enigma to unravel. Edward is easy, slightly hopeless, but is kind. Amy on the other hand is unlike anyone Edward has ever met before. So begins a relationship that will force both to negotiate their boundaries, values, priorities, and ultimately, their relationship with their own identities.
Its also a story about a couple that we meet at the place where so many relationships end, in counselling rooms for couples, litigating the story of how they found their way together and the way that money, or the lack of it thereof, can ruin our lives, our choices and our sense of self. It’s an overcooked satire of class and gender colliding in a tense mismatched relationship, considering Amy is a late 20s Asian artist who worked precariously casual jobs. But as to why these two come together in the first place, that forms the basis of Melbourne author Jess Ho with the answer right there in the title of the book. Their furtive meeting in a clothing shop, Leeds to a proposal only a couple of months later, offers explosive exploration of tensions, which the author describes in mostly cold and transactional terms with brief, unconvincing flashes of tenderness.
Edward is casually racist, can’t get Amy’s pronouns right, has a drinking problem and is uninterested in politics, identity and money, while Amy is opinionated, blunt and righteous, not holding back when Edward’s father makes a joke about his son having “bought” them, or when a childhood bestie turns out to be a boorish homophobe, or even when his prissy sister hosts a gender-reveal party. Ho’s signature dry style drips with sarcastic tone, always present throughout . But these cartoonishly villainous Characters border on caricature, rendering Amy’s vocal defiance like a reading of Social justice 101. Into the plot is thrown Catherine Swell, art teacher, who becomes Amy’s mentor, through whom young Amy learns to paint and gains access to therapists, her first part-time job, and a taste for boeuf bourguingnon. It comes as no surprise considering Ho’s background as a food writer that the prose comes alive when describing food— slippery brisket noodles, stuffed fried bean curd skins, stewed meats and braised chicken feet.
Amy’s penchant for pairing champagne with French fries becomes a metaphor for the worlds they straddling. The novel zig-zags through events that are random and outlandish, bordering at times on parody, just short of satire. Where i found the novel short is in Amy’s frustrating lack of agency at crucial points. That said, it is a humdinger of a read, guaranteeing success for the author’s second triumph.
Jess Ho’s PEOPLE WITH MONEY has been published by Simon and Schuster.
