Not since Susan Cain’s Quiet have I read a book that felt so specifically written about me and the people I know. I grew up in a small mining town in rural Ontario — my dad worked in a uranium mine and my mom was a schoolteacher. I went to university in downtown Toronto and now work in the finance world. Lots of my friends from home are still there, either they never left or left for a time and found themselves back near home.

This is about how people born into working-class families move into the world of the middle class, and the challenges that come with it. It’s terrific, and brought back a whole lot of anxious and stressful memories from when I was younger (and, like, last year or whatever).

It’s not perfect — I was hoping it would be more academic or prescriptive, (like Quiet). The author falls into a couple of ‘us v them’ traps that (unintentionally) come off as spiteful or envious, and he does a lot of generalizing.

All that said, it captures moments of insecurity, alienation and self-sabotage that are likely universal among those he’s profiling.