Down the shore

the long version

"An exhilarating debut novel of reinvention, friendship, and ambition-from the Jersey shore to Scotland. Tom Alison is weeks away from collecting his diploma at an East Coast boarding school and heading off to the Ivy League. His goal: a job in high finance alongside the power brokers he's been watching from a distance as the working-class son of a single mom. But when he gets caught selling drugs on campus, his life among the children of privilege quickly falls apart. Tom escapes his ruined reputation with a new friend-Claire Savage, the son of a disgraced financier-and the two of them flee to the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. But what they find is a world shaped by even more powerful and unforgiving forces of greed, class, and ambition than the one they left behind. As Tom is sucked into a life of sex, drugs, status, and greed, he learns what it takes to break the rules-and how we can be broken by them. Reminiscent of early Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney, Down the Shore is an unflinching, unforgettable novel of youth and excess"--