Sex and Vanity: A Novel

Kevin Kwan’s 2020 Sex and Vanity is a contemporary retelling of E. M. Forster’s 1908 novel A Room With a View. Kwan borrows the approximate names, settings, and narrative circumstances of Forster’s British classic and recontextualizes them within contemporary American high society and culture. The novel is a work of satire that comments upon the excess, exclusivity, and privilege of the ultra-wealthy. These themes and scenarios are hallmarks of Kwan’s writing. He explores similar sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues in his best-selling trilogy Crazy Rich Asians, which established his name in the literary and cinematic worlds. In Sex and Vanity, Kwan’s fourth novel, he revisits these themes in the context of his protagonist Lucie Churchill’s narrative. Lucie is a 19-year-old Chinese American biology major at Brown University when she takes a trip to Capri, Italy, for her friend Isabel’s destination wedding. She’s annoyed that her mother has insisted that she travel with her pretentious older cousin Charlotte but is determined to have a good time and behave while away from home without her mother and brother for the first time. However, Lucie’s controlled facade falters when she meets the handsome and enigmatic George Zao, another guest at Isabel’s wedding. Lucie can’t understand her feelings for George and struggles to temper her attraction to him. When Charlotte catches Lucie and George in a heated sexual encounter, Lucie believes that her reputation is ruined and that her community will shun her. Over the following years, she does her best to disassociate from what happened. However, when George resurfaces in her life in New York, Lucie’s old feelings return and threaten her idyllic, high-society future. Lucie’s attempts to prove herself to her family and community instigate the novel’s explorations of the Tension Between Desire and Social Expectation, the Satire of High Society, and Cultural Identity and Dual Heritage.

This guide refers to the 2021 First Anchor paperback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The novel and this guide discuss racism and classism.

Plot Summary

Lucie Churchill is 19 years old and attending Brown University when her close friend Isabel Chiu invites her to her destination wedding in Capri, Italy. Lucie appeals to her mother, Marian Churchill, who insists that she can accept the invitation only if she agrees to travel with her persnickety older cousin Charlotte Barclay. Lucie accepts the condition and flies to Capri with Charlotte. She does her best to temper her annoyance with Charlotte’s pretentious behaviors so that she can enjoy the idyllic island setting. However, Charlotte makes a scene immediately after the cousins arrive at their Capri hotel. She’s furious that they haven’t received the rooms with the requested ocean views.

In the hotel dining room, Charlotte audibly complains about their accommodations, attracting the attention of fellow wedding guests Rosemary Zao and her son, George Zao. Rosemary insists that because she and George are from Hong Kong and have homes in Australia and Hawaii, they don’t mind giving their rooms to Charlotte and Lucie. Charlotte refuses the offer, but her acquaintance Auden Bebee eventually convinces her to make the room trade.

Lucie runs into George throughout her time in Capri. She doesn’t know how she feels about him, but she can’t deny that there’s energy between them. George, like Lucie, is a member of high society, but his dress and behavior don’t conform to its social norms. Lucie feels irritated and intrigued every time they encounter one another. During one such encounter, Lucie kisses George. Afterward, she berates herself for losing control of her emotions.

After Isabel’s wedding ceremony, Lucie and George kiss again and engage in sexual foreplay. Charlotte catches them together and reveals that one of the event’s drones caught them on camera. George finds the drone and destroys the footage.

Years later, Lucie is living in Manhattan and pursuing a career in the arts. One day, her wealthy, elite boyfriend, Cecil Pine, stages an elaborate proposal outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lucie accepts. She’s desperate to prove herself to her family and decides that ignoring Cecil’s idiosyncrasies is the best way to secure the future she wants.

Shortly after, Lucie is shocked and furious when she discovers that Rosemary and George are renting the beach house near her family’s summer house in East Hampton. As soon as she sees George again, her old feelings reawaken. She tries to deny what’s happening but feels overcome by emotion when she discovers that one of Isabel’s wedding guests turned her story with George into a feature film, which is set to premiere at a festival in Toronto. She and George have another sexual encounter, which inspires Lucie to dismiss him from her life. George professes his love for Lucie and insists that he sees and understands her better than Cecil ever will. Lucie eventually breaks off her engagement, and she and George marry and honeymoon in Capri.