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Infidelities, Absurdities, and Tribulations
The Uber 1% follows the absurd lives of the wealthy and status-obsessed as you turn country-club gossip, social punishment, affairs, and vanity into a sharp satirical portrait of privilege without self-awareness. What first drew you to the “Uber Rich” as a subject for satire?
Basically my up-close association with and observations of the Uber and Filthy Rich. For years, I laughed at, made note of, and in some cases endured their vagaries, vanities, infidelities, absurdities, and tribulations which seemed the “stuff” ripe for satire.
Centerport feels like a recurring stage for these stories. What does that setting represent to you?
Uber life on the Connecticut shoreline.
How do you balance exaggeration with emotional truth when writing characters this vain, privileged, or ridiculous?
I’m not sure that I do or that I really make a conscious effort to distinguish the two.
Were any characters especially fun or especially difficult to write?
Frankly, they were all fun. Maybe because I knew them so well, in many cases, they just wrote themselves.
The Uber 1%
The Uber 1% by Bob Ford is a satirical short story collection about the wealthy, mostly the “Uber Rich,” with a few ordinary and filthy rich characters mixed in. The book moves through a world of country clubs, affairs, social punishment, vanity, money, and status, often returning to Centerport as its main stage. It is clearly working in the genre of social satire, with short fiction used to expose how ridiculous people can become when image matters more than character.
I liked the sharpness of the writing. Ford likes big personalities. Asher, Isadora, Angeline, Tolova, and the others are drawn with a kind of amused cruelty, but the comedy usually lands because the characters keep revealing themselves without realizing it. That is the fun of the book. People say the wrong thing, chase the wrong prize, marry for the wrong reason, and then act shocked when the bill comes due. Some scenes feel almost like gossip overheard at a club lunch, polished just enough to become fiction.
The book leans into exaggeration. At its best, the excess feels intentional. The names, the brands, the clubs, the houses, the affairs, all of it builds a world where money buys comfort but not wisdom. Sometimes the satire is broad, even blunt, but I think that bluntness fits the target. These are not quiet interior portraits. They are comic takedowns of people who have confused wealth with worth.
I would recommend The Uber 1% to readers who enjoy social satire, linked short stories, and fiction that pokes at privilege with a grin rather than a whisper. Fans of sharp, class-conscious comedy and country-club absurdity will probably have the best time with it. It’s a funny, biting look at people who have almost everything, except self-awareness.
Pages: 307 | ASIN: B0GTF4KYRT
