Lyla

Lyla is one of two first person narrators in Good Rich People. Throughout the novel, Lyla struggles to maintain her status as a member of the elite by proving herself to Graham and Margo. She believes that being a good person and being a rich person are mutually exclusive. Her inability to define a sense of self, apart from her socioeconomic status, leads Lyla to participate in the game to destroy a tenant's life. She agrees to sabotage Demi in order to unequivocally define herself as a ruthless elite who does not need moral purity to be innocent.

Lyla's memories of Elvira, the tenant she attempted to save from the game, inform her character's humanity. While she participates in destroying Demi's life in the narrative present, the allusions to her past relationship with a tenant establish her ability to act on moral integrity. The character’s moral duplicity...