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WORK TITLE: Fake Plastic Love
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.kimberleytait.com/
CITY: London, England
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY:
Canadian, American, and Swiss citizen * http://inkwellmanagement.com/client/kimberley-tait * https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberleytait/?ppe=1 * http://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2017/03/alumna-qa-writer-and-strategist-kimberley-tait-01
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017022925
Descriptive conventions:
rda
LC classification: PS3620.A364
Personal name heading:
Tait, Kimberley
Found in: Fake plastic love, 2017: CIP t.p. (Kimberley Tait)
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Library of Congress
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Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Married. Daughter of a former flight attendant and a hockey player and coach. Citizen of Canada, the United States, and Switzerland.
EDUCATION:Dartmouth College, B.A.; Columbia Business School, M.B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Marketing strategist for financial services and investment firms. Has worked previously for investment banks in New York and London, England.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Kimberley Tait is a London-based writer and marketing strategist for investment firms and financial service companies. She was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She moved to the United States following high school graduation to attend college at Dartmouth University, where she received her bachelor’s degree in English and government. Her honors thesis addressed life as a staged performance in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Following graduation from Dartmouth, Tait attended Columbia Business School, where she received a master of business administration (M.B.A.) degree. While at Columbia, Tait co-led the rewriting and launching of the school’s M.B.A honor code. After receiving her M.B.A., she worked for many years in investment banks in New York and London. Tait lives in London with her husband.
Tait’s debut novel tells the story of M. and her friend Belle Bailey, recent Dartmouth College graduates navigating their new, post-college independence in New York City. A coming-of-age story, Fake Plastic Love follows the women from their time in college to their years exploring adulthood in New York. A contributor to Publishers Weekly wrote, “With sweeping nods to Fitzgerald and other writers of the Gilded Age, Tait’s debut novel sparkles with vitality and conscience.”
The book opens while the women are still in college. The reader quickly learns that M. and Belle are extremely different. Narrator M. is a finance major and varsity squash player. Her studies and future career are her only concerns, and she takes them very seriously, so the lack of a romantic life in her world does not bother her. Belle, on the other hand, is a super-socialite, known for planning college events and maintaining a celebrity status on campus. After her parents are killed in a plane crash, her popularity only grows.
Following graduation, M. is offered a position as an analyst at Bartholomew Brothers, one of the most prestigious investment banks in New York. Chase Breckenridge, Belle’s fraternity boy boyfriend, also lands a job at the bank. Chase has an unsavory reputation, and his sexist and demeaning nature fit in perfectly at the competitive and abusive Bartholomew Brothers office.
While M. is adjusting to the difficult demands of her new job, Belle is characteristically pursuing a romantic life of beauty and fun. She has started a lifestyle blog, La Belle Vie, which presents her life as one of perfection and simplicity. Belle rides around the city on her red bicycle, taking photographs for her blog, which quickly becomes popular. While her images depict her life as idyllic and fanciful, Belle still struggles with the loss of her parents and a sense of uncertainty about what her future holds.
At Bartholomew Brothers, M. finds a friend in Jeremy Kirby, a former hot air balloonist and an unlikely employee at the office. When Jeremy meets Belle, he begins courting her, and M. is torn about whether to encourage the relationship or protect Jeremy. Though the characters grow and change as time passes, a contributor to Kirkus Reviews noted, “Tait’s debut novel is weighed down by stereotypical characters and situations.” Fed up with Chase’s antics, Belle eventually leaves him for Jeremy. The two share an idyllic view of the world, but Belle’s deeper insecurities and pain become more obvious as her facade is contrasted with Jeremy’s authenticity.
Over time, M. begins to loathe her job. As Belle’s and Jeremy’s relationship grows, M. begins to look for a career and a romantic life that can suit her needs, rather than constantly sacrificing happiness for prestige. A contributor to UWIRE Text described Fake Plastic Love as “a read that will appeal not just to college students but also to anyone with a deep nostalgia for the past in the face of an extremely digitized future.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2017, review of Fake Plastic Love.
Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2017, review of Fake Plastic Love, p. 68.
UWIRE Text, March 3, 2017, review of Fake Plastic Love, p. 1; March 28, 2017, author interview, p. 1.
ONLINE
Kimberley Tait Website, http://www.kimberleytait.com (November 20, 2017).
Kimberley Tait was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and moved to the U.S. to attend Dartmouth College, where she wrote an Honors Thesis on life as a staged performance in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kimberley earned an MBA from Columbia Business School and has worked at investment banks in New York and London, continuing to work with financial services and investment firms as a writer and marketing strategist. A Canadian, American, and Swiss citizen, Kimberley lives in London with her husband. Fake Plastic Love is her debut novel.
Kimberley Tait was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and moved to the U.S. to attend Dartmouth College, where she was an English and Government double major and wrote an Honors Thesis on life as a staged performance in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kimberley earned an MBA from Columbia Business School, where she co-led the re-write and launch of the school’s MBA Honor Code in 2007, and has worked at investment banks in New York and London. She continues to work with financial services and investment firms as a writer and marketing strategist. A Canadian, American, and Swiss citizen, Kimberley lives in London with her husband. FAKE PLASTIC LOVE is her debut novel.
15 Minutes w/ Kimberley Tait, Author of ‘Fake Plastic Love’
Posted on May 15, 2017
Toronto-born Kimberley Tait wrote her first book, Fake Plastic Love, after resigning from working full-time at a prestigious bank in London, England. Set from 2006-2012, Fake Plastic Love follows the story of two best friends as they navigate ‘the real world’ after college: one works on Wall Street, the other is a whimsical blogger. When a third enters the mix – Jeremy – the friends face life’s biggest question: In this fake plastic world, what do success, friendship and love even look like?
SDTC: What should we be paying more attention to?
KT: Each other. Isn’t it so strange that in our digital age we are so hyper-connected through technology yet more disconnected from other people than ever before? Looking someone in the eye as we deliver a message is getting rarer and rarer. The more fixated we are with our screens — not just one but multiple screens, all at the same time — the less we engage with the people around us and the here and now. Technology has become a convenient crutch, an escape hatch, and a wall that keeps us safe. On one hand, we are exposing our lives more than ever, but we are also able to hide more effectively than ever before. One of the messages in my debut novel, Fake Plastic Love, is the importance of looking up from our devices — whether it’s a work smartphone or a highly choreographed social media feed — to focus on our genuine selves, and to invest in the living and breathing people around us.
What was the last Netflix series you binged on?
Stranger Things. It fills me with a deep nostalgia for my 1980s childhood. Also, the character Eleven is an eerie doppelgänger of me as a young girl. Five friends messaged me about it as soon as they started watching the series: “It’s you when you were little…with a shaved head and supernatural powers.”
One new thing you learned this year?
This year brought incredible shock and sadness when my husband’s sister passed away suddenly and unexpectedly at age 37. She was in the prime of her life — a phenomenally gifted artist, strikingly beautiful, and genuinely golden-hearted. Like many people, I have always tossed around epigrams like “Carpe Diem.” The tragedy of my sister-in-law’s sudden passing revealed to me just how incredibly fragile life is. As Lin-Manuel Miranda said so beautifully in his sonnet at last year’s Tony Awards: “…nothing here is promised, not one day.” There are no guarantees, so we are compelled to make the most we can of everything we are blessed to have right at this moment.
What memory brings a smile to your face?
Spring skiing with my family in my Mom’s home country of Switzerland when I was growing up. We all wore mirrored aviator sunglasses at all times. I often look at photos from those halcyon days, and it seems like some kind of mythical time and place.
What book/song/lyric/etc is resonating with you right now?
The book I can’t stop glowing about is Dear Reader by Mary O’Connell, a totally enchanting read that is Wuthering Heights meets the Gilmore Girls. It’s fantastical and hilarious and electric. Most of all, it’s a wonderful reminder that we should always try and extract magic from books to sprinkle onto our humdrum lives, come what way.
On a musical note, I recently discovered and have become fixated with Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox. They blend eras to create something fresh and charming, which is the effect I am hoping to create by echoing other eras in my own writing style!
Describe the funniest thing you’ve experienced in recent memory:
Practically all of the funniest moments of my life involve my older brother. He is a crazily talented linguist, speaking 10 languages fluently, and does the most incredible impersonations and skits. Sometimes he makes up fictional characters and actually assumes those characters in restaurants, on the subway, or when walking down the street. He is so convincing that everyone falls for the act. Most recently, he visited my husband and me in London for Easter and made frequent cameos as Richard “Dick” Tibbles, a hard-working, hard-drinking Englishman with an almost incomprehensible Cockney accent.
Best advice you’ve been given?
It’s a tie between “Keep thinking” and “Never, ever, ever give up.”
What is the best part of being your current age range?
Giving yourself permission to pursue your own definition of happiness. In my mid-thirties a light bulb went off and I understood that there is no real happiness to be found when you make life decisions based on what other people will think. Or what you think other people will think. (The prevalence of social media has made this so much more complicated.) First, other people give significantly less thought to you than you think they do. Second, none of that actually matters. What counts is what you see and feel when you give yourself a long, hard look in the mirror at the end of the day.
What word or phrase should we use more often?
Romantic. In an unsentimental, complex, and frequently shocking world, I think the world is in dire need of more romance. As Sebastian, the hero of “La La Land,” asks: “Why do you say ‘romantic’ like it’s a dirty word?” It’s not dirty, it’s glorious! Even a small romantic thought or gesture can take a mundane moment and turn it into a flash of magic.
What’s on your night table?
The wonderful new F. Scott Fitzgerald short story collection, I’d Die For You and Other Lost Stories — all rejected from publications in their time because they were too raw and unfiltered, not the star-washed Fitzgerald prose readers had come to expect — and his very first novel This Side of Paradise, which I’m re-reading for probably the twentieth time. I am a Fitzgerald fanatic and thought it would be fun to read both back-to-back so I could compare his first published work with this last.
What one item would you be lost without (besides your phone)?
My Warby Parker tortoise shell eyeglasses. I am horrendously near-sighted so literally would be lost without wearing them or my contact lenses.
Your biggest literary pet peeve?
Tying up loose ends at the end of a book too quickly, so it feels like a mad scramble to the finish. And gratuitous graphic scenes that seem to have been included purely for the shock factor.
What trends are you loving right now?
Stacked heels and fashionable performance fabrics — lovely looking and so comfortable!
Who was your celebrity crush when you were a kid?
Beauregard “Bo” Duke from the Dukes of Hazzard.
What do you love most about Toronto?
Its blend of modesty and pride. And its exceptional Bloody Caesars.
May 17, 2017
Fake Plastic Love: Q&A With Kimberley Tait
Smartphone (Wi-Fi enabled) in hand, we’re ready to take on the world. The Internet: it’s our alarm clock in the morning, our source for news throughout the day and one of the main ways we maintain our social lives. We live in the digital age (there's certainly no denying that) but, on our quest for more likes and keeping tabs on the latest viral sensation, are we losing touch with the real world along the way? In her debut novel, Fake Plastic Love, Canadian-born author Kimberley Tait explores the effects of the web and social media on the way we perceive reality. We recently chatted with her (IRL) about her book, and her own relationship with the 'net—talk about an eye opener! —Johnnie Smart
fpl
Why did you decide to write your novel, and why now?
I started writing Fake Plastic Love to explore some of the powerful forces that surfaced in the mid-2000s—in particular, social media and the distorted relationship many young professionals began to have with work and achievement. A very complicated and high-pressure millennial backdrop began to take shape. Both personally and professionally, young people became caught up in a harrowing race to gather as many gold stars or “likes” as possible. But was the person with the most gold stars and “likes” the happiest person? What was this mad race all about and was the proverbial winner actually the loser? I wanted to write a story that tackled those questions, showing how very different characters would navigate and ultimately survive in this hyper-connected, hyper-competitive world. The book draws heavily on the themes I explored in my senior honours thesis at Dartmouth College: "Beyond the Glitter and Glare: Life as a Staged Performance in the Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald." When I wrote that thesis in 2000 and 2001, I could never have anticipated how relevant performance theory would become in everyday life with the explosion of social media.
kim t
Can you describe some of the themes in the novel?
Fake Plastic Love is a tale of bright young millennials pushing off from undergraduate life and grappling with what success, love, and happiness actually mean in our digital age—a time when style and substance are increasingly difficult to distinguish. Ultimately, it’s a story of how reality holds up—or so often doesn’t hold up—to expectations, at a time when it is extremely tough to figure out what is real and what is an illusion. Narrator M. is a hardworking and loyal employee at her investment bank, but gradually learns that her iconic firm may not be everything she has built it up to be in her mind. Meanwhile, her blogger best friend, Belle Bailey, curates a pretty online world, pulling the wool over the eyes of friends and strangers alike. The radically different worlds of banking of blogging may be more similar than we would have ever imagined: in both cases, slick surfaces may be disguising a more grisly reality underneath.
Disillusionment is another important theme in Fake Plastic Love. Many high-achieving young people today are weighed down by a sense of disappointment—after being told by their parents they could work hard and do anything, it turns out life isn’t the linear trajectory they imagined it would be. Meanwhile, social media tells us that all of our peers are fantastically successful, always a step or two ahead of us. To symbolize this, you’ll see the ideas of flight and aborted flight woven throughout the novel. Nostalgia is another key theme. We have entered a strange moment in history—most of us are plugged in and fully digitized, yet we find ourselves longing for a simpler, more romantic, offline time. Dreaming of an easier time and place provides us with an easy escape hatch. And this is where the Internet really excels. The Atlantic ran a wonderful article a few years ago that observed: “Nostalgia, at its most basic level, requires access to memories—and there is, of course, no better archive than the Internet.”
In this same vein, Fake Plastic Love is a story of the Romantic and the Realist that I think are living inside all of us. M. is the quintessential Realist and Belle is the ultimate Romantic—the two are drawn together but are constantly in conflict. We’re a messy mix of both of romance and realism, but the novel argues that the Romantic will ultimately win and can overturn everything in the end. Now more than ever, I believe we need to encourage the Romantic. We need more old-fashioned love stories. We need more La La Land. In a sterile, unsentimental, and frequently shocking world, we are in dire need of more Romance with a Capital R!
What are some of the challenges that 20-somethings face now that they may not have in previous generations?
When I was growing up, and for the first half of my 20s, there wasn’t a need to document or broadcast your everyday life. You just lived it. How totally romantic is that? The only broadcasting you did was sharing an update in the class notes column of your printed alumni magazine. (And of course there have always been those curious people who draft detailed end-of-year update letters and include them with their Christmas cards.) Today, thanks to social media, everyday life has the quality of a spectacle. We fall into the trap of thinking that something hasn’t actually happened unless we have posted it online, when in fact the most important and wonderful and surprising moments in life are by definition un-post-able. We are encouraged to boast, showboat, overshare, to claim ownership of things and places—and in turn it makes everyone unhappy. Why on earth are we doing this? Research has proven that using Facebook depresses us, while in-person social interactions uplift us. There is too much virtual voyeurism. People are able to see too much without having to look anyone in the eye. By following friends and strangers online, everyone is measuring themselves against so many benchmarks, many of which are totally unattainable. Frustration and dissatisfaction is inevitable.
tait
How has the digital world influenced the way we see our lives?
The concerning thing about the digital world is that we can never be totally sure whether what we are seeing and reading online is real and genuine or fake and choreographed—or if it’s a blend of both, which most things probably are. I am an enthusiastic user of Instagram, which fills the role that scrapbooks used to have in my life, but am constantly amazed at how literally people take it. I take everything I see online with a giant block of salt; if people don’t, it becomes very dangerous. When social media first took flight, people adopted a sort of “bare all” mentality. Over time, they started culling their online presence, stripping it back to showcase only the prettiest and most exclusive. Even if we understand it’s just another person’s picture-perfect highlight reel, seeing so much startlingly green grass all around us can be very demoralizing. It can so easily make our own realities seem inadequate. Because as hard as you try, you’ll never have a fighting chance to keep up with the Joneses if those Joneses don’t actually exist.
What do you hope people take away from your debut novel?
Most of all, I hope readers enjoy the voice and style of Fake Plastic Love. My biggest goal is to craft beautiful prose and compelling, sometimes larger-than-life characters that transport readers. Language and atmosphere is much more important to me than a gripping plot line. Of course I want readers to be engaged—but I want the sentences and characters to be what engages them. I have always been drawn to books with distinctive voices and a transporting atmosphere that envelope you and carry you away into some other bewitching world. I also hope readers will give some thought to the moral of the story. M. comes to many realizations about the “real” world and about herself by the end of the novel. One of her biggest epiphanies is that we are all a grand total of what we spend our time doing in our life—so what do we want to add up to? I hope young graduates and people of all ages who read Fake Plastic Love will be more introspective and more thoughtful about what and who they devote themselves to, both professionally and personally.
What can we expect to see from you in the future?
A second novel, I hope! I am working on manuscript now that draws from my experiences as a Canadian romanticizing and ultimately moving to the U.S. in the late 1990s. Oh, how geopolitical tables have turned in 20 years! It’s a fascinating time to explore questions of national identity. The story is told in an even more lyrical and sentimental style that I hope will appeal to readers who enjoy Fake Plastic Love.
Debut novelist Kimberley Tait on Gretzky, Michael Jackson & Virgin Ears
Date
July 11, 2017
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Kimberley Tait Dirty Dozen Series
Kimberley Tait
London (the one across the pond) based author Kimberley Tait had an unusual path to publishing. After moving from her native Toronto to the U.S., she earned an MBA from Columbia University and began a career in the investment industry in New York. Taking what she'd learned of that glittering, high pressure world, Tait turned her eye to fiction. The result was her debut novel Fake Plastic Love (Flatiron Books). The story of an Odd Couple style friendship between an idealistic lifestyle blogger and a tough-minded investment banker, the book both is a send up of millennial Manhattan and a thoughtful examination of two young women trying to figure out what is real and worth holding onto. When a Gatsby-esque man comes into their orbit, both women find themselves faced with decision not just about what their lives will be, but who they are.
We're pleased to welcome Kimberley to Open Book today to take our Dirty Dozen challenge, where we ask authors to spill twelve unexpected and unknown facts about themselves. Kimberley tells us about a near miss with Michael Jackson, her nostalgic Blue Jays connection, and why she and her friend Ted are a package deal.
At the tender age of five, I convinced my parents to take me to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” concert at the old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. (“Billie Jean” and its iconic bass line have always struck a deep chord in me.) Unfortunately, Michael was several hours late — Tito kept emerging from back-stage to apologize for his tardiness — so I fell asleep long before the King of Pop ever appeared.
Wayne Gretzky once called me beautiful. He was 17 years old, I was a newborn baby in my crib, and he hadn’t yet been dubbed The Great One — but it still counts, doesn’t it? At the time, my Dad was working at Victoriaville, a hockey stick manufacturer, and Wayne came to our house to pick up some demo sticks. My Mom said she felt sorry for that very polite, skinny young man who was driving a rusty van.
I moved to New York City to join the September 11th relief effort, working for an organization that helped expedite assistance to the people and families affected by the World Trade Center attacks.
Growing up, my Dad used to take my brother and me to at least one Toronto Blue Jays home game per week during baseball season. I was there to watch Joe Carter hit his game-winning homerun off of Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams to clinch the first World Series on Canadian soil in 1993. I had an epic — and boy do I mean epic — crush on first baseman John Olerud.
I learned to ski when I was three and was a little speed demon infamous for giving my Mom heart palpitations as I blazed past her down the mountain in her native Swiss Alps.
My brother is a diplomat who speaks nine languages fluently and has lived in more than 10 countries. He does the most hilarious impersonations — I still deeply regret not ever sending a video of him to Lorne Michaels, which I’m convinced would have earned him a spot on Saturday Night Live.
I have run four marathons. I never run to music, but do a lot of writing and editing in my head and sometimes need to stop to tap words or phrases or ideas into my iPhone Notes app so I won’t forget them. At my desk, I love writing to music, finding sparks of inspiration in song lyrics — from Cole Porter to Caro Emerald to Coldplay. The title for my debut novel, Fake Plastic Love, and one of its heroines Belle Bailey were inspired by the Radiohead song “Fake Plastic Trees.”
I am a triple citizen: Canadian, American, and Swiss.
My Mom was a flight attendant for 37 years with Air Canada. She is Swiss and was hired in Zurich in 1965 when North American airlines were on hiring sprees in Europe to source multilingual talent. A few years later, she met my Dad on one of her flights when he was heading to Austria to play and coach hockey in Graz.
I have never had my ears pierced and am weirdly protective of what I call my “virgin lobes.”
I once had a sailing accident on Lake Ontario and nearly lost three fingers — but thankfully, didn’t.
I have a small pink bear companion named Ted. We were first introduced when I came home from the hospital as a newborn and he has traveled with me ever since. My husband was mystified by Ted at first but has grown quite accepting and fond of him.
_____________________________________________
Kimberley Tait was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and moved to the U.S. to attend Dartmouth College, where she wrote an Honours Thesis on life as a staged performance in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kimberley earned an MBA from Columbia Business School and has worked at investment banks in New York and London, continuing to work with financial services and investment firms as a writer and marketing strategist. A Canadian, American, and Swiss citizen, Kimberley lives in London with her husband. Fake Plastic Love is her debut novel.
Alumna Q&A: writer and strategist Kimberley Tait '01
by Kylee Sibilia | 3/28/17 1:15am
Kimberley Tait ’01 has balanced pursuits in both the financial and literary worlds since graduating from Dartmouth as an English and government double major.
After earning an MBA from Columbia Business School, Tait worked at investment banks in New York and London before striking out on her own as a financial writer and marketing strategist.
Born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Tait has citizenship in the U.S., Canada and Switzerland and currently lives in London.
Her debut novel, “Fake Plastic Love,” will be released on May 9.
The story centers on two Dartmouth graduates and best friends adapting their personal ideologies after graduation.
How did your time at Dartmouth influence your future career?
KT: It had an enormous impact on my writing. At the time, I had a huge interest in F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I’ve always been deeply moved and inspired by his writing.
There wasn’t any Fitzgerald on any of the English course syllabi, so I was allowed to essentially construct my own one-person class on Fitzgerald the fall of my senior year.
Ultimately, by being allowed to construct this one class, I developed a topic for my senior thesis, which was on life as a staged performance in the novels of Fitzgerald. That’s had a big influence on the themes that I explore in “Fake Plastic Love.”
When I wrote the thesis, I had no idea how imminent the explosion of social media would be, which would make this idea of staging life so much more relevant than I could ever have imagined.
It was interesting to see that as the world evolved, social media became pervasive. I kept viewing it through the lens of this thesis that I wrote. Years later, I still carry that with me.
In your novel, the main characters Belle and M represent both the whimsical and the logical sides of students at Dartmouth, and your dual careers in investment banking and writing seem to reflect this dichotomy as well. How have you balanced these two passions, and what would you say to Dartmouth students who might also want to pursue several very different paths?
KT: My intention was to create these two character foils: M, who is the narrator, and her best friend Belle. M believes that she’s this staunch realist, and Belle is a very whimsical, romantic figure in the novel.
M, without giving anything away, is figuring out that it maybe isn’t as straightforward as saying “I am a realist,” just as it’s not perfectly straightforward to say, “I am a romantic.”
My personal belief is that we’re sort of a messy mix of both, and actually that’s a wonderful thing because that’s what makes us human. No matter what career path you go down, it’s really important to recognize that there are many parts to who you are.
Since graduating from Dartmouth, I was always writing on the side, even when I was working in-house at various investment banks.
I knew that I wanted to observe and analyze and really dissect the world around me, including the professional world around me, by writing. While that wasn’t something that I was pursuing day to day as a career, it was something that I knew was really important to hang on to.
More and more, we’re inundated with this idea of having to put ourselves online in what seems to be a very choreographed and scripted way.
Through all of that noise, it’s really important to maintain some kind of introspection, to say, “listen, even though I am working at an investment bank, there may be a romantic side to it.”
How much of “Fake Plastic Love” is autobiographical?
KT: It draws on my observations of the world that I saw developing around me, beginning in the mid-2000s when social media became so prevalent, and certainly pre-financial crisis when I graduated in 2001. Going into investment banking seemed at the time to be one of the most all-American things that a high achieving graduate could do.
“Fake Plastic Love” does draw from my experiences working in-house at Citigroup and later at Goldman Sachs, and then doing my MBA at Columbia and sort of the mindset everybody had of needing to get a particular job offer from a particular firm even if it didn’t necessarily make them happy or wasn’t what they actually wanted.
All of that gets put into “Fake Plastic Love,” but the characters are totally fictitious. I put pieces of myself into the characters, but that’s really as autobiographical as it gets.
I hope the themes are very realistic, but my style is slightly romanticized and in some cases sentimental, and I want that to be a little bit otherworldly and a little bit larger than life.
Ultimately, my hope is that the reader gets transported away from the everyday reality that they may be living.
Do you plan to write more books in the future? Will you continue working in investment banking?
KT: I’m now working on revising my first manuscript. I grew up in Toronto in Canada, and it’s based on my experiences moving to the U.S. It’s a very interesting time to explore the theme of national identity, and particularly the political environment that we find ourselves in. I’m really enjoying returning to that manuscript and using all the lessons that I’ve learned from the process of publishing “Fake Plastic Love” to enrich it. I hope to finish that in the near future.
Beyond that, I do have a few other ideas that I’m keeping on the back burner as potential future novels, so hopefully this first one will be a success, and then I’ll take it from there.
I think what has enabled me to have more flexibility — and this was sort of how I found a balance between the romantic and realist side of myself — was when I left Goldman Sachs and started my own business working as a financial writer and marketing strategist.
I work with financial services and investment firms, doing all manner of writing work.
That’s been a wonderful way to still enjoy the world of finance and continue to work with those sorts of clients but then balance it with fiction writing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Kimberley Tait
Kimberley Tait was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, and moved to the U.S. to attend Dartmouth College, where she was an English and Government double major and wrote an Honors Thesis on life as a staged performance in the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Kimberley earned an MBA from Columbia Business School, where she co-led the re-write and launch of the school's MBA Honor Code in 2007, and has worked at investment banks in New York and London. She continues to work with financial services and investment firms as a writer and marketing strategist. A Canadian, American, and Swiss citizen, Kimberley lives in London with her husband. FAKE PLASTIC LOVE is her debut novel.
Novels
Fake Plastic Love (2017)
Tait, Kimberley: FAKE PLASTIC LOVE
(Jan. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Tait, Kimberley FAKE PLASTIC LOVE Flatiron Books (Adult Fiction) $25.99 5, 9 ISBN: 978-1-250-09389-9
A college friendship between two Dartmouth women is tested by post-graduation life in New York City.M. (our narrator goes by a single initial) and her best friend, Belle Bailey, could not be more different. M. is an ultraserious finance major and varsity squash player who has little interest in or luck with the opposite sex. Belle is a character from a musical, "blond head and hundred-watt smile and apple-red accessories," given to penning invitations on her monogrammed letterpress cards that say things like "Ice-skating on Occom Pond after class today--bundle up in College colors and I'll bring the hot cocoa (spiked, of course--shhhhh!)." When both of Belle's parents are killed in a plane crash, she becomes even more of a romantic figure. After graduation, M. lands a job at Bartholomew Brothers, "the most iconic of the New York investment banks"--as does Chase Breckenridge, the repugnant frat boy Belle's been dating all through college, though why she would be interested in this pig of a fellow remains anyone's guess. While Belle rides around Manhattan on her red bicycle, taking photos for her airy-fairy lifestyle blog, La Belle Vie, M. toils away at the viciously sexist, competitive, and abusive firm, dealing with the horrific Chase and even less savory characters. The one exception is a whimsical former hot air balloonist named Jeremy, who could not be more out of place in finance but seems made for Belle. Unfortunately, none of these characters ever feels real, and the results of their poor choices are muffled--even the market crash seems to happen offstage. When M. turns down both the job at a socially conscious firm and the ideal man that drop on her doorstep, both are waiting for her when she comes to her senses. Along similar lines, it wasn't a great decision to start the novel with M.'s wedding, undercutting possible suspense. "It didn't add up to what I was told it would add up to," says one character, referring to his career. "That may be the great tagline of our generation, you know," says M. Unfortunately, it's also the tagline of this book. Tait's debut novel is weighed down by stereotypical characters and situations.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Tait, Kimberley: FAKE PLASTIC LOVE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA477242533&it=r&asid=d7d74a710856e8899d3bf2bceb38c1f9. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A477242533
Fake Plastic Love
264.13 (Mar. 27, 2017): p68.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Fake Plastic Love
Kimberley Tait. Flatiron, $25.99 (352p)
ISBN 978-1-250-09389-9
With sweeping nods to Fitzgerald and other writers of the Gilded Age, Tait's debut novel sparkles with vitality and conscience. Observant, contemplative, and witty M. takes center stage as the lives of four 20-somethings unfold. Postcollege, M. takes a job as an analyst at the prestigious Bartholomew Brothers banking firm in New York, becoming the banker her mother wishes she would marry. M.'s college best friend. Belle Bailey, also calls New York home, documenting her hopelessly romantic, rosecolored-glasses view of the world in her iiberpopular blog. La Belle Vie. She's created the illusion of her life as pretty and perfect, a facade at odds with an uncertain reality and the pain of a tragedy she can never escape. Belle's sometime beau, boorish Chase Breckenridge, works alongside M. and is a thorn in her side. Jeremy Kirby, M.'s closest work colleague, is a man in the wrong era, a Victrola in a world of MP3s. He becomes Belle's ardent suitor, and M. gets caught in the middle, torn between protecting Jeremy and humoring Belle. As the years progress, so does the disillusionment the characters feel about their current realities; struggling to make sense of their presents and wondering what they want for their futures. Fluid, graceful, and unfaltering prose highlights this remarkable novel; relatable characters and themes complete the package. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Fake Plastic Love." Publishers Weekly, 27 Mar. 2017, p. 68. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487928072&it=r&asid=39799ec9e18964bc9e9dcb5d451ff07a. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487928072
Alumna Q&A: writer and strategist Kimberley Tait '01
(Mar. 28, 2017): p1.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Uloop Inc.
http://uwire.com/?s=UWIRE+Text&x=26&y=14&=Go
Kimberley Tait '01 has balanced pursuits in both the financial and literary worlds since graduating from Dartmouth as an English and government double major.
After earning an MBA from Columbia Business School, Tait worked at investment banks in New York and London before striking out on her own as a financial writer and marketing strategist.
Born and raised in Toronto, Canada. Tait has citizenship in the U.S., Canada and Switzerland and currently lives in London.
Her debut novel, "Fake Plastic Love," will be released on May 9.
The story centers on two Dartmouth graduates and best friends adapting their personal ideologies after graduation.
How did your time at Dartmouth influence your future career?
KT: It had an enormous impact on my writing. At the time, I had a huge interest in F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I've always been deeply moved and inspired by his writing.
There wasn't any Fitzgerald on any of the English course syllabi, so I was allowed to essentially construct my own one-person class on Fitzgerald the fall of my senior year.
Ultimately, by being allowed to construct this one class, I developed a topic for my senior thesis, which was on life as a staged performance in the novels of Fitzgerald. That's had a big influence on the themes that I explore in "Fake Plastic Love."
When I wrote the thesis, I had no idea how imminent the explosion of social media would be, which would make this idea of staging life so much more relevant than I could ever have imagined.
It was interesting to see that as the world evolved, social media became pervasive. I kept viewing it through the lens of this thesis that I wrote. Years later, I still carry that with me.
In your novel, the main characters Belle and M represent both the whimsical and the logical sides of students at Dartmouth, and your dual careers in investment banking and writing seem to reflect this dichotomy as well. How have you balanced these two passions, and what would you say to Dartmouth students who might also want to pursue several very different paths?
KT: My intention was to create these two character foils: M, who is the narrator, and her best friend Belle. M believes that she's this staunch realist, and Belle is a very whimsical, romantic figure in the novel.
M, without giving anything away, is figuring out that it maybe isn't as straightforward as saying "I am a realist," just as it's not perfectly straightforward to say, "I am a romantic."
My personal belief is that we're sort of a messy mix of both, and actually that's a wonderful thing because that's what makes us human. No matter what career path you go down, it's really important to recognize that there are many parts to who you are.
Since graduating from Dartmouth, I was always writing on the side, even when I was working in-house at various investment banks.
I knew that I wanted to observe and analyze and really dissect the world around me, including the professional world around me, by writing. While that wasn't something that I was pursuing day to day as a career, it was something that I knew was really important to hang on to.
More and more, we're inundated with this idea of having to put ourselves online in what seems to be a very choreographed and scripted way.
Through all of that noise, it's really important to maintain some kind of introspection, to say, "listen, even though I am working at an investment bank, there may be a romantic side to it."
How much of "Fake Plastic Love" is autobiographical?
KT: It draws on my observations of the world that I saw developing around me, beginning in the mid-2000s when social media became so prevalent, and certainly pre-financial crisis when I graduated in 2001. Going into investment banking seemed at the time to be one of the most all-American things that a high achieving graduate could do.
"Fake Plastic Love" does draw from my experiences working in-house at Citigroup and later at Goldman Sachs, and then doing my MBA at Columbia and sort of the mindset everybody had of needing to get a particular job offer from a particular firm even if it didn't necessarily make them happy or wasn't what they actually wanted.
All of that gets put into "Fake Plastic Love," but the characters are totally fictitious. I put pieces of myself into the characters, but that's really as autobiographical as it gets.
I hope the themes are very realistic, but my style is slightly romanticized and in some cases sentimental, and I want that to be a little bit otherworldly and a little bit larger than life.
Ultimately, my hope is that the reader gets transported away from the everyday reality that they may be living.
Do you plan to write more books in the future? Will you continue working in investment banking?
KT: I'm now working on revising my first manuscript. I grew up in Toronto in Canada, and it's based on my experiences moving to the U.S. It's a very interesting time to explore the theme of national identity, and particularly the political environment that we find ourselves in. I'm really enjoying returning to that manuscript and using all the lessons that I've learned from the process of publishing "Fake Plastic Love" to enrich it. I hope to finish that in the near future.
Beyond that, I do have a few other ideas that I'm keeping on the back burner as potential future novels, so hopefully this first one will be a success, and then I'll take it from there.
I think what has enabled me to have more flexibility -- and this was sort of how I found a balance between the romantic and realist side of myself -- was when I left Goldman Sachs and started my own business working as a financial writer and marketing strategist.
I work with financial services and investment firms, doing all manner of writing work.
That's been a wonderful way to still enjoy the world of finance and continue to work with those sorts of clients but then balance it with fiction writing.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Alumna Q&A: writer and strategist Kimberley Tait '01." UWIRE Text, 28 Mar. 2017, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA487399046&it=r&asid=4d918312997cf57d414d237c58c30928. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A487399046
Book review: "Fake Plastic Love" by Kimberley Tait '01
(Mar. 3, 2017): p1.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Uloop Inc.
http://uwire.com/?s=UWIRE+Text&x=26&y=14&=Go
A strong depiction of the life of two Dartmouth graduates, soon-to-be-published novel "Fake Plastic Love" by Kimberley Tait '01 is a read that will appeal not just to college students but also to anyone with a deep nostalgia for the past in the face of an extremely digitized future. Tait's novel tells the story of two close friends: the narrator M., a no-nonsense investment banker who believes in the value of hard work and stability, and Belle, a whimsical lifestyle blogger who believes in the power of dreams and love. M. and Belle's friendship is one of the story's strongest points because Tait does a great job depicting the undercurrent of youth that draws the two characters together despite their differences.
Initially set at Dartmouth, "Fake Plastic Love" chronicles how M. and Belle meet and the beginnings of their close friendship. The two call themselves the "Lost Girls," because each finds more comfort in the other than in anyone else. As an alumna herself, Tait renders the College in beautiful detail, alluding to quintessential Dartmouth experiences, such as canoeing on the Connecticut River, ice skating on Occom Pond and taking part in First-Year Trips. Tait also uses these details to capture the Dartmouth "bubble," which many students, including M. and Belle, only begin to notice after leaving the idyllic streets of Hanover.
As the book progresses, the College becomes a representation of M. and Belle's youth -- and for Belle, it also becomes the place where she loses that innocence. Midway through their time at Dartmouth, Belle's parents are killed in a plane crash, disfiguring the unflinching, youthful optimism that drew M. to her in the first place. As their time at the College draws to a close, Belle is left to pick up the pieces of her loss while M. looks toward the future, working hard and entering the recruiting process.
Tait also does a fantastic job depicting the competition often seen at Dartmouth. As M. goes through recruiting and earns a job with the fictional yet frighteningly familiar Bartholomew Brothers, a top-tier investment bank in New York City, she struggles with the predictability of her path yet follows it anyway due to a perverse desire to prove herself -- a desire many students at Dartmouth share.
M.'s life at Bartholomew Brothers takes up a great portion of the novel, depicting the struggle of bankers to maintain an aura of mysterious luxury often held in the past in the contemporary age of technology. Having worked in both marketing and wealth management in New York and as a financial writer in London, Tait's personal experience shines through in the skillful manner in which she describes the ups and downs of M.'s time at Bartholomew Brothers.
Belle joins M. in New York City, along with Chase, a fellow Dartmouth graduate and employee at Bartholomew Brothers -- and Belle's on-again, off-again boyfriend. Tait excels at illustrating Belle and Chase's unhealthy relationship in an interesting yet disturbing manner: both characters seem more engrossed in what they can get from the other person than in any actual feelings they might have for each other.
Belle spends her time in New York taking pictures for her lifestyle blog "La Belle Vie," a profession that Chase often writes off as frivolous. It is Chase's constant irritation and dismissal of her that eventually drives Belle into the arms of Jeremy, M.'s best friend at Bartholomew Brothers whom she describes as "our generation's Last True Romantic."
Jeremy, an idealistic hot air balloonist who only works in investment banking to support his parents, quickly falls for Belle and her shared sense of wonderment with the world. It doesn't take long for Belle to leave Chase for Jeremy, and the whimsical relationship between the two dreamers becomes one of the main focuses of the novel. While Belle and Jeremy share a similar sense of idealism, Tait does a good job establishing the contrast between the two characters, for Jeremy is much more comfortable with his identity than Belle has ever been with hers.
It is hard not to see the similarities between this narrative and that of "The Great Gatsby:" a broken young woman is drawn away from her rich, aggressive beau to an idealistic young dreamer who loves her more than she can ever love him -- all of the drama witnessed by a narrator who roots for the dreamer despite knowing that his hope is unfounded. Once again, Tait writes from personal experience: her honors thesis at Dartmouth focused life as a performance in F. Scott Fitzgerald's works. Fans of Gatsby will surely enjoy "Fake Plastic Love," but Tait still puts a new spin on an old story that will still leave readers feeling surprised with each page they turn.
With its strong depictions of life after Dartmouth and well-developed characters, "Fake Plastic Love" falls short only in its title. The moniker makes a well-written, insightful contemporary novel seem like it's going to be a summer-beach read for teenagers. However, at its core, the novel captures what it's like to be a 22 year old with absolutely no idea what you're doing in the world -- and the struggle of figuring that out. The simplicity of the title should not deter readers from experiencing the depths of this story and its subject matter.
At one point, M. imagines asking a young person like herself who had just graduated from college, "You will be a grand total of what you spend your time doing in life -- aso what do you want to add up to?" "Fake Plastic Love" asks the reader to consider this question and more, and it is worth the read for anyone who believes that dreams and reality have the potential to come hand in hand.
Rating: 9/10
"Fake Plastic Love" will be published by Flatiron Books on May 9.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Book review: 'Fake Plastic Love' by Kimberley Tait '01." UWIRE Text, 3 Mar. 2017, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA483832273&it=r&asid=16bff40535a542525a0737cec6c7e59a. Accessed 23 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A483832273