Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
There is a sentence that gets said about certain people, always kindly, usually at a funeral or a promotion, and it is one of the most quietly brutal sentences in the English language. He did very well for himself. Consider what it contains. It is admiring; it is meant entirely well; and it establishes, in six words, that the person being discussed started somewhere else, that the somewhere else was worse, and that the movement between the two is the most interesting fact about them. Nobody says it about a man whose father was a barrister.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
