Affluent idlers find a just cause

Book review of 'Beautiful Animals'

BEAUTIFUL ANIMALS 

Lawrence Osborne 

Hogarth

287 pages; $25

In the age of GoFundMe, the act of giving can feel vexingly weightless. This relationship between ease and charity is the starting point of Lawrence Osborne’s new novel, Beautiful Animals. Of the central character, an entitled young Englishwoman named Naomi, her father observes: “She wanted to be a Samaritan: the easiest job in the world, and perfect for the useless European middle classes.”

Mr Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice. For the idle elite of his novel,