Prep
Summary (from the publisher): Curtis Sittenfeld' s debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school' s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.
As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of--and, ultimately, a participant in--their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she' s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered. Ultimately, Lee's experiences coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school' s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.
As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of--and, ultimately, a participant in--their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she' s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered. Ultimately, Lee's experiences coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.
Review: This first person, coming of age story tells the story of Lee Fiora, who leaves her home in South Bend, Indiana to attend the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. But the beautiful world of brick buildings featured in the school brochure is different from the reality of the privileged world many of Lee's fellow students come from. Lee finds herself struggling academically for the first time in her life but more consuming is her despair over what she feels is her social ostracization and lack of friends. As a scholarship student who comes from outside of the wealthy social world of her peers, she feels painfully separate and acutely different from the norm.
With Lee's four year struggle for social acceptance within her boarding school world, Sittenfeld has perfectly captured the painful side of adolescence, when fitting in socially is of paramount importance. Lee overanalyzes every word and gesture from her peers and approaches everyone with the assumption that they wouldn't choose to be her friend if given a better selection. I identified so much with her critical analysis of all social situations.
In many ways, this book is a character study of Lee Fiora. Critics of this book complain because of the lack of major plot points but it seems as if that's almost the point. Seemingly small moments in the career of a high school age student - such as a run in with a crush or a fight with a friend - are major highlights for a teenager and take on staggeringly huge significance in Lee's life. In many ways, Lee is an unlikeable character in all the ways you might expect from a self-conscious teenager who feels like she doesn't belong. She snubs friends in favor of ones who give her a boost up socially. She is deeply embarrassed and cuttingly cruel to her parents who drive hours across country to visit her. And despite yearning for friends and belonging, she often makes little to no attempt to reciprocate friendly overtures. In other ways, Lee is dislikable because she dislikes herself; she fails to highlight her best attributes because she is so zeroed in on her flaws. For instance, there must be a reason that the well liked and sensible Martha likes Lee so much to room with her year after year, but we never get that perspective.
A narrative device I appreciated in this novel was the way a much older, adult Lee serves as the narrator. This allows her a prescience about her peers' futures and also allows her to reflect on her teenage actions and provide a more measured context for why she behaved the way she did in certain situations: "I think, looking back, that this was the single best thing about Ault, the sense of possibility. We lived together so closely, but because it was a place of decorum and restraint and because on top of that we were teenagers, we hid so much" (42). Although the narrator lets us know the career and relationship path of many of the Ault students, the one that is left conspicuously blank is Lee herself. Just as Lee is distance and aloof with her classmates, so is the adult narrator Lee with her readers, refusing to give insight into where Ault eventually took her.
With Lee's four year struggle for social acceptance within her boarding school world, Sittenfeld has perfectly captured the painful side of adolescence, when fitting in socially is of paramount importance. Lee overanalyzes every word and gesture from her peers and approaches everyone with the assumption that they wouldn't choose to be her friend if given a better selection. I identified so much with her critical analysis of all social situations.
In many ways, this book is a character study of Lee Fiora. Critics of this book complain because of the lack of major plot points but it seems as if that's almost the point. Seemingly small moments in the career of a high school age student - such as a run in with a crush or a fight with a friend - are major highlights for a teenager and take on staggeringly huge significance in Lee's life. In many ways, Lee is an unlikeable character in all the ways you might expect from a self-conscious teenager who feels like she doesn't belong. She snubs friends in favor of ones who give her a boost up socially. She is deeply embarrassed and cuttingly cruel to her parents who drive hours across country to visit her. And despite yearning for friends and belonging, she often makes little to no attempt to reciprocate friendly overtures. In other ways, Lee is dislikable because she dislikes herself; she fails to highlight her best attributes because she is so zeroed in on her flaws. For instance, there must be a reason that the well liked and sensible Martha likes Lee so much to room with her year after year, but we never get that perspective.
A narrative device I appreciated in this novel was the way a much older, adult Lee serves as the narrator. This allows her a prescience about her peers' futures and also allows her to reflect on her teenage actions and provide a more measured context for why she behaved the way she did in certain situations: "I think, looking back, that this was the single best thing about Ault, the sense of possibility. We lived together so closely, but because it was a place of decorum and restraint and because on top of that we were teenagers, we hid so much" (42). Although the narrator lets us know the career and relationship path of many of the Ault students, the one that is left conspicuously blank is Lee herself. Just as Lee is distance and aloof with her classmates, so is the adult narrator Lee with her readers, refusing to give insight into where Ault eventually took her.
Stars: 4
Related Title:
- American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
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