In the glossy private world Fifth Avenue teens, some millionaire par-ents will do pay, or say anything to help their children ace the SATs.
Noah rose from humble beginnings and, through pure and resourcefulness, got himself through Princeton . Now staggering under the weight of massive student loans and dazzled by life in the big city, Noah en-ters the rarefied field of SAT tutoring in Manhattan , working one-on-one with the spoiled, gorgeous children of the American aristocracy.
He takes on the considerable academic challenges that are Dylan Thayer, a dissi-pated high school athlete-socialite, and his waifish sister Tuscany . Dylan won't lift a finger to do anything but pick up a lacrosse stick, and Tuscany is avidly pursuing her own downfall via drugs and relationships with men more than twice her age. But their mother, a self-medicating pediatrician, has ambitious plans for them in spite of their shortcomings-and she plans for their sat tutor as well.
Trying to build his own life while living on a shoestring Harlem and flirting with his beautiful roommate keeps Noah busy enough, but the needs of the glamorous, struggling Thayer Kids and the inappropriate advances of their mother prove all-consuming. As dead-lines for college admissions neat and the SAT tension builds, Noah finds himself pre-sented with a Faustian bargain, and he must make a moral decision that will affect him and his student for years to come.
With echoes of The Deuil Wears Prada, The Nanny Diaries, and Bright Lights, Big City , Glamorous Disasters is an incisive portrayal of a small and privileged world, a caution-ary tale written by a Harvard grad who was once an SATtutor himself-an outsider who became a magnificently observant insider.
