All the Other Mothers Hate Me

All the Other Mothers Hate Me is a domestic mystery thriller that satirizes upper-class, bourgeois London society from the perspective of an American who grew up in a working-class home. The novel frames this upper-class society as a collection of absurd, status-obsessed people who use their polite manners to mask their immoral and impolite actions. This closely observed satire is inspired by American author Sarah Harman’s life in London. As she writes, “The setting was shaped by my own experience as an American trying to wrap my head around the frankly bonkers world of West London private schools […] (Harman, Sarah. “Sarah Harman Introduces All the Other Mothers Hate Me.” HarperCollins Reach, 16 Feb 2025). British society is notoriously class-stratified: Class is a defining factor in community, culture, and opportunity as noted in the annual British Social Attitudes report (“40 years of British Social Attitudes: Class identity and awareness still matter.” National Center for Social Research, 21 Sept. 2023). The minor characters in the novel represent different archetypes of this rarified, upper-class world, while the