Prep

The first thing to note about the book is the cover. I'm not a judge-the-book-by-its-cover kind of person, but there's something intensely embarrassing about reading a book with an embossed pink belt on the cover. I ran into a friend while carrying my copy and he asked what I was reading: “not a chick-lit rom-com” I answered, defensively.The only problem being, it kind of is. Lots of obsessing over what people are or aren't wearing, who is or is not dating whom and whether or not each character is popular. The attempt is to make it a self-aware, self-referential chick-lit rom-com, peppered with an introspective, if flawed protagonist.Which brings us to the crux of the issue: this would be fascinating, were it new territory. However, it's far from it. The flawed but introspective teenage protagonist who makes sense of the intricate, unexplicable world called teenagehood has already been done, most notably and incomparably by [b:The Perks of Being a Wallflower 22628 The Perks of Being a Wallflower Stephen Chbosky http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1313063835s/22628.jpg 2236198]. And also, while there's always room for another quality book in any genre, Lee Fiora has a lot more emphasis on the flawed than on the introspective. In fact, mostly, the best adjective for her is dumb. Its hard to imagine how she got into boarding school in the first place, much less on a scholarship. And every time she criticizes herself, you just want to agree with her: Yes, you're an idiot; yes you suck academically; yes you push away everyone who wants to be friends with you, of which there seem to be shockingly many, given that you're cruel to your friends, never make social overtures and push away everyone who wants to be friends with you.There was an attempt at a message about family and how hard it is to leave your family as a teenager, but Lee's family was so much more flawed than she was that I found the fact that she ever talked to them at all just another annoying quirk of hers (her father slapped her across the face in public. Last I checked, child abuse is rather unforgivable and never excusable)The bits that the book does well, on the other hand, it does very well - a sentence or two about the bond of a true friendship; the description of the sense of commingled sadness and joy when someone unexpectedly really and truly knows you; the episodic and fragmented nature of teenage experiences.

This book is brutal and I could not put it down. Talk about nailing the internal narrative of a high school student. Set right before cell phones became ubiquitous. They still used the hallway payphone. Ah, simpler times! I loved getting to know these characters all through Lee's eyes- and the writer took her time with it. This book is often described as the female Catcher in the Rye. This is so much better. And the criticism I so often saw about this book is that nothing happens. Well- 4 years of boarding school is what happened. Yes, Lee was often ridiculous in her fears and made bizarre assumptions, but everyone can relate to what the reader knows is her social anxiety. We can all relate to that high school crush that literally consumed your every waking moment. Her thoughts on her teachers and parents were so painfully accurate. This book has some cringey moments but man did I love it.

Like many middle-class middle Americans, I've always been kind of both mystified and fascinated by the idea of prep school. What do the children of the wealthy get up to? It is exactly middle-class middle America (South Bend, specifically) that Lee Fiora of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep hails from. She impulsively applied to the exclusive Ault School, outside of Boston, and her middle school grades earn her a scholarship. Once she gets there, though, she doesn't know quite how to proceed fitting into her new milieu. She feels awkward, uncomfortable, and very much like an outsider among her privileged classmates.

Lee does eventually make at least some friends, but continues to struggle both socially and academically as time progresses. She nurses a long-burning crush on Cross Sugarman, the most popular guy in her class. She becomes more and more estranged from her family and roots in the Midwest. She is desperately, achingly self-conscious about everything, and possesses no more ability to articulate exactly what it is she wants than to do anything as drastic as taking steps to get it. So when a national newspaper reporter is looking for interview subjects for a piece on what boarding school is really like and reaches out to Lee right before graduation, her decision to talk about her experience winds up being part of what colors the whole thing for her in retrospect.

This was often a difficult book to read. Not because it was bad (it was in fact very good), but because Sittenfeld is so good at recreating that agonizing mental experience of being an adolescent. Lee wants so much to be liked, accepted, popular, but she can't get out of her own way. She passively observes her classmates, so afraid to be thought of as annoying or stupid or dorky that she can barely interact with them even when they're receptive to her. Being trapped inside her head while reading reminded me so much of being trapped inside the darker corners of my own head during high school that I had to put the book down even when I was into it. It's brilliant in that way, and (appropriately, given Sittenfeld's own experience in prep school both as a student and as a teacher) in nailing the little nuances of the upper class. The names alone (Cross, Aspeth, Horton, Gaines) are dead-on.

While the atmosphere and writing quality are excellent, the book does have plotting and characterization issues that hold it back from being great. Sittenfeld tells Lee's story through just a brief stretch of time during each semester as she goes through school. It leaves a lot of gaps, and I found myself wondering what exactly Lee did each summer when she went home...the one time we follow her back to Indiana for a winter break we get a picture of some deep-seated conflict that I would have been interested in seeing explored more. And it leads to only getting little slices of characters that should be important, like Lee's best friend Martha. Despite the closeness Lee relates and we're clearly meant to understand, the reader gets almost no sense of who Martha is or the usual way in which they interact, getting just a handful of conversations between them. It's frustrating, and keeps the book feeling just-a-bit underbaked. It's an interesting, compelling book, and a clear indicator of significant talent in its author, but its flaws are real. I'd recommend this book, though it does have sexual content that might mean a more immature teen reader might not be ready for it.

I tried, I really did. I made it to parents' weekend, hoping that maybe seeing her parents in her beloved Ault would snap her out of her selfish and proud attitude.

It didn't work when a teacher told her that people actually want to be friends with her, but she refuses to talk to them. Giving haircuts didn't make her personable. Even when she actually makes friends, she treats them line shit.

I could not handle this character anymore. I give up.

This was a very uncomfortable read. I did not particularly enjoy reading the book, but I cannot deny that it was a very well written, very loving and very unflinching way of looking back at a younger self (whether fictional or not). At times, I have to admit, it hit a bit too close to home, which is probably why I didn't always enjoy the experience.