It seems awfully strange to suggest that The Secret History romanticized the New York elite. It's been a few years since I read it but isn't the entire second half of the novel effectively about the protagonist becoming disillusioned with that world as his entire social network collapses? The epilogue which checks in…

To be fair, Britain has a lot of boring, gray and mundane places.

>the Slough location seems like a tip of the hat to The Office