Gwen never feels comfortable around the other well-heeled women at the school gate of her daughter's Upper East Side school. This is despite knowing one of the women, Philippa, from her childhood, when she was friends with her sister. Former model Philippa is now married to the head of an investment bank and is the ultra-cool yet aloof leader of the pack. Newcomer Minnie, the new wife of a flashy financier, enters the fray, and she seems to know a few things about Philippa's past. Meanwhile Gwen's husband is investigating some insider trading that implicates some of these players.
Macy nails the descriptive picture of the world these women inhabit but the plot was a bit convoluted and I found it immediately forgettable.
Mrs, by Caitlin Macy, is about three women whose paths collide when their children attend the same preschool. The summary says: "In the well-heeled milieu of New York's Upper East Side, coolly elegant Philippa Lye is the woman no one can stop talking about. Despite a shadowy past, Philippa has somehow married the scion of the last family-held investment bank in the city. And although her wealth and connections put her in the centre of this world, she refuses to conform to its gossip-fuelled culture.
Then, into her precariously balanced life, come two women: Gwen Hogan, a childhood acquaintance who uncovers an explosive secret about Philippa's single days, and Minnie Curtis, a newcomer whose vast fortune and frank revelations about a penurious upbringing in Spanish Harlem put everyone on alert.
When Gwen's husband, a heavy-drinking, obsessive prosecutor in the US Attorney's Office, stumbles over the connection between Philippa's past and the criminal investigation he is pursuing at all costs, this insulated society is forced to confront the rot at its core and the price it has paid to survive into the new millennium." Mrs is out in February 2018.