By Audrey Fong
Rain poured down on my friends and I as we trudged our way over to the main stage at the OC Book Fair. Admittedly it was not a long walk from the coffee shop to the stage, but it was raining heavily and given that we’re all Southern Californians, any amount of rain feels like a hassle, making the walk seem like more of a hurdle than it really was. That being said, all of us — who met through our MFA program — are hoping to publish books, so the “Debut Author Panel” seemed like the best fit for us, despite our vastly different interests.
While the panel was supposed to feature four authors, only Lauren Ling Brown arrived. Maybe the other authors are also Southern Californians who’d agree that rain does make a journey infinitely more difficult. As we sat in the rain listening to Ling Brown talk about her debut novel, Society of Lies, I was most struck by her comments on the editing process — how her book was originally darker until her editor encouraged her to make the book sexier — and how her status as an outsider allows her to approach topics of race and class differently. Thus, while Society of Lies is not typically the type of novel I reach for (my friends joke that I’m almost exclusively interested in stories about depressed Japanese people but I promise I read authors other than Haruki Murakami and Mieko Kawakami), I visited the public library the week after to check out Society of Lies, a Reese’s Book Club pick.
In Society of Lies, protagonist Naomi returns to Princeton University for her sister Maya’s graduation only to discover that Maya was found dead in the nearby lake. While Maya’s death initially appears to be an accidental drowning — or perhaps a suicide — Maya believes her sister was murdered. Similar to Maya, Naomi was a part of the exclusive dining club, Sterling Club, and the secret society housed within it, the Greystone Society, a decade earlier. During her time at Princeton, another girl in the Greystone Society, Lila, died under mysterious circumstances, leading Maya to wonder if the deaths are related and how Greystone’s powerful network may be involved in covering up both deaths.
Told from the perspective of present-day Naomi in 2023, Naomi a decade earlier at Princeton, and Maya in the months leading up to her death, Society of Lies takes the reader into the exclusive worlds of Princeton University, their dining clubs, and the New York elite. While both Sterling and Greystone are fictional, the clubs and worlds are influenced by Ling Brown’s own experience at Princeton. For those who enjoyed Min Jin Lee’s satirical portrayal of Princeton in Free Food for Millionaires, Society of Lies similarly provides readers with many opportunities to marvel at the elitist and corrupt ways of Princeton’s dining clubs and alumni networks.
Society of Lies is at its best when Ling Brown uses her status as an outsider to critique the racism, elitism, and corruption at Princeton, both among the elite it both produces and protects. For example, in one scene, Naomi realizes that the tutoring gig a Greystone faculty member chose her for is really her taking the SAT and writing the application essay for a legacy student. Upon learning this, Naomi tells the reader, “I was starting to realize that this perfect life lived by Greystone members wasn’t so much given to them as it was taken from others.” Given the 2019 “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal and the recent overturning of affirmative action, the scenes detailing the various ways under qualified legacy students get into Princeton and eventually find high paying jobs feel especially important. The overturning of affirmative action, its proponents argued, was a return to meritocracy, but as Ling Brown demonstrates, college admissions, especially to elite universities, was never a meritocracy to begin with.
In the author’s note, Ling Brown writes that “though every multiracial person’s experience is unique,” she “wanted to center a story on two women who struggled with their place in the world and explore the feelings of being an outsider.” Similar to Ling Brown, Maya and Naomi are half Chinese and half African American, a detail that is critical to understanding their experiences at Princeton. At various times, characters either dismiss their achievements — someone tells Naomi that the only reason why she was tapped for Greystone was because she was a light-skinned Black student — or offer microaggressive advice to them — a professor offering Maya a reporter job says, “It would be better, though, if you chose one, uh, side to lean into. Your ambiguity might confuse them.” The treatment of the two sisters, largely shaped by their identity as half Asian/half African American, isn’t just a detail, but an essential part of the story that explains why they initially feel fortunate for their place at Princeton and how their eventual disillusionment with the university and increasing fear of the elites that run it shapes the central mystery of the story: Who killed Maya?
Described as a thriller, Society of Lies, especially towards its last quarter when Naomi is at the end of her investigation, really is gripping and drew me in. The twists build up in a way that did genuinely leave me surprised yet made total sense, answering some of the questions that I had throughout the book. As I read the party scenes and romance plots, which were not my favorite, I couldn’t help but wonder what type of novel Society of Lies was before Ling Brown’s editor suggested making it sexier and less dark. Ling Brown’s writing soars in the last quarter of the novel, when she builds up the suspense and mystery through possible attempts at Naomi’s life and leans into the horror and violence of the situation. Her handling of the mystery at the core of the novel and her depiction of elite society (and criticisms of it) are where the novel impressed me the most. Ling Brown wrote that her goal was “to write an entertaining story that also encourages conversation around friendship, sisterhood, privilege, and multiracial identity;” without a doubt, she has accomplished that. In a post-Covid society and one in which we may witness the world’s first trillionaire, Ling Brown’s accessible novel feels especially critical for its discussions on race and unearned privilege.
Audrey Fong is your stereotypical Southern Californian. She loves the beach, drinks more boba than the doctor recommends, and has an Insta-famous dog. She is the co-founder and co-editor of Soapberry Review.