Product Description

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–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12636 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-22
• Released on: 2005-11-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780812972351
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Curtis Sittenfeld's poignant and occassionally angst-ridden debut novel Prep is the story of Lee Fiora, a South Bend, Indiana, teenager who wins a scholarship to the prestigious Ault school, an East Coast institution where "money was everywhere on campus, but it was usually invisible." As we follow Lee through boarding school, we witness firsthand the triumphs and tragedies that shape our heroine's coming-of-age. Yet while Sittenfeld may be a skilled storyteller, her real gift lies in her ability to expertly give voice to what is often described as the most alienating period in a young person's life: high school.

True to its genre, Prep is filled with boarding school stereotypes--from the alienated gay student to the picture perfect blond girl; the achingly earnest first-year English teacher and the dreamy star basketball player who never mentions the fact that he's Jewish. Lee's status as an outsider is further affirmed after her parents drive 18 hours in their beat-up Datsun to attend Parent's Weekend, where most of the kids "got trashed and ended up skinny-dipping in the indoor pool" at their parents' fancy hotel. Yet even as the weekend deteriorates into disaster and ends with a heartbreaking slap across the face, Sittenfeld never blames or excuses anyone; rather, she simply incorporates the experience into Lee's sense of self. ("How was I supposed to understand, when I applied at the age of thirteen, that you have your whole life to leave your family?")

By the time Lee graduates from Ault, some readers may tire of her constant worrying and self-doubting obsessions. However, every time we feel close to giving up on her, Sittenfeld reels us back in and makes us root for Lee. In doing so, perhaps we are rooting for every high school student who's ever wanted nothing more than to belong. --Gisele Toueg

From Publishers Weekly
A self-conscious outsider navigates the choppy waters of adolescence and a posh boarding school's social politics in Sittenfeld's A-grade coming-of-age debut. The strong narrative voice belongs to Lee Fiora, who leaves South Bend, Ind., for Boston's prestigious Ault School and finds her sense of identity supremely challenged. Now, at 24, she recounts her years learning "everything I needed to know about attracting and alienating people." Sittenfeld neither indulges nor mocks teen angst, but hits it spot on: "I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a piece of scrap paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed... never decreased my fear." Lee sees herself as "one of the mild, boring, peripheral girls" among her privileged classmates, especially the über-popular Aspeth Montgomery, "the kind of girl about whom rock songs were written," and Cross Sugarman, the boy who can devastate with one look ("my life since then has been spent in pursuit of that look"). Her reminiscences, still youthful but more wise, allow her to validate her feelings of loneliness and misery while forgiving herself for her lack of experience and knowledge. The book meanders on its way, light on plot but saturated with heartbreaking humor and written in clean prose. Sittenfeld, who won Seventeen's fiction contest at 16, proves herself a natural in this poignant, truthful book.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School–When Lee Fiona arrives at Boston's prestigious Ault boarding school for her freshman year, she enters a world unlike anything she knew in South Bend, IN. "I always worried that someone would notice me," she says of her first bewildering weeks at the school. "And then when no one did, I felt lonely." This dilemma follows her throughout her four years. In her senior year, when she hooks up with star basketball player Cross Sugarman, she asks that he keep their relationship quiet. But she is appalled when she suspects that he has done just that. Sittenfeld has exquisitely captured the angst of the outsider in this fine coming-of-age novel. Lee is 24 when she recounts her boarding school history. Those few years' perspective give her an authentic voice that makes her sound less eccentric and more mainstream than Salinger's Holden Caulfield. Lee's world is peopled with the geeks and greats of the high school years–super-popular Aspeth Montgomery, who warns Lee away from a relationship with a townie; Aubrey, her math tutor, who professes his unrequited love; and enigmatic Cross, who initiates Lee into sex, but seems less than the full-fledged boyfriend she craves. Much more than stereotypes, Prep's characters, in their depth and humanity, will appeal to readers, who will find themselves rooting for Lee despite her foibles and her insecurities. Her moments of self-doubt will reverberate with adolescents everywhere.–Patricia Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library System, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

'catcher' this is not, and thank goodness
This book reminds me of "Joe College" by Tom Perrotta and "Old School" by Tobias Wolff with the same formula of working class outsider attends an elite school and learns life lessons en route to graduation. Unlike the protagonists in those books, however, "Prep's" Lee Fiora, manages to make more than just temporary connections with her classmates, and it is that which distinguishes the book from others with male protagonists.

Much has been made by reviewers of the fact that the protagonist is a snob. So what. Many teenagers are judgmental and materialistic, regardless of class, and most are, at some point, intensely embarrassed by their parents. It's part of growing up. What a cop out it would be if Lee were the kind of Hollywood teen who in the end always does the right thing. It's refreshing to see an author create a first novel protagonist who clearly isn't some idealized version of herself.

I just wish the author had prefaced each section with a date - it took me a needlessly long time to figure out when it was set. Characters used today's lingo (hook-up, etc.), but there were also elements specific to both the 80's and 90's. This was a bit jarring.

High school flashback
This coming-of-age story is told from the perspective of Lee Fiora, an Indiana resident who is awarded a scholarship at the prestigious Ault School, an East coast boarding institution. "Prep" chronicles Lee's four years at Ault and details the numerous experiences and heartaches that help shape her life.

Author Curtis Sittenfeld has succeeded in writing a very adult book about something that nearly all readers will be able to relate to: high school. Being a teenager is not an easy experience for anyone, and all of us have our fair share of high school horror stories to go around. In Lee's case, the high school experience is even more challenging because she is thrown into a world where she is unbelievably out of place. Lee feels like an outcast at Ault: she's one of the few kids who are there on scholarship, and the other students come from very wealthy families. The money issue is one of several reasons why Lee is unable to fit in with her peers and really make her mark at Ault. She withdraws from her classmates and has a difficult time making friends. As Lee struggles to succeed at her new school, she finally forms a solid friendship with one girl, Martha, and has a huge crush on a fellow student, Cross Sugarman, who is a member of the "popular" crowd. Throughout her four years at Ault, Lee manages to learn a lot about relationships with other people and also a lot about the relationship she has with herself.

Critics of this book complain that Lee is an annoying character because she's incredibly insecure and obsesses about everything all the time. Personally, those qualities just make her more endearing to me. The teenage years are rough, high school is brutal, and experiencing all of that in a strange environment where you have no contact with your family must be a thousand times worse than what the average kid has to deal with. Yes, Lee can be hurtful, selfish, and downright stupid at times...but she's a teenager, and most teenagers go through a phase when they're extremely moody and self-centered. That being the case, I don't think there's anything unusual about Lee. I think her best quality is her honesty. Lee recognizes positive traits and tragic flaws in every person she meets, including herself. It's very refreshing.

I think the best thing about this book is that although the story is narrated by Lee and she is detailing her high school experiences, she is reflecting back on her time at Ault ten years after she graduated. "Prep" isn't a sappy story of teenage angst that belongs in the young adult section: it's a summary of Lee's boarding school experiences being told to the reader by Lee when she's in her late 20s. This isn't a book for teenagers; it's a story that was written for adults. I think most adults will be able to relate to Lee's experiences on many different levels, which is why I highly recommend this book.

Authentic and beautifully written
This was definitely one of the most engrossing novels I've read so far this year. PREP is the story of Lee, an insightful and eloquent (yet insecure) teen from Indiana. Remembering words her middle class father spoke years before ("these are the kinds of houses where they send their sons to boarding school"), she has made it her goal to attend an elite boarding school. And she achieves it-- with a scholarship. The story commences as Lee begins her first year at Ault (think Andover) and concludes as she graduates four years later.

This was an Amazon recommendation since I read Tom Brown's Schooldays. And, it's similar-- a bit. Like Schooldays, History Boys, even Harry Potter, etc., the book follows the lives of several teens during their formative years. I'm not sure everyone would like it-- I'm not sure I'd recommend it to my husband, for instance, but it was indeed excellent. The author, Curtis Sittenfeld , really has the voice of a young insecure teen growing into a more confident, but never completely secure, young woman. Initiallly, I thought the author was a man and was completely taken aback-- how could a man actually know this girl so thoroughly? However, Curtis Sittenfeld is indeed a woman. And, the protagonist and her friends and classmates lives were exactly as I remembered my own life and those of my friends and classmates during high school. Truly, the authenticity the author brought to this book-- the dialogue, the events, the crushes, the friendships-- was uncanny.

I've read the negative reviews here, but disagree with some of the reasoning. One reviewer, for instance, writes about how boring the sex scenes were. With all due respect, that reviewer missed the point-- of course the sex was boring and empty and that was the very purpose of writing about it. So much the narrator believed or hoped to be important was or turned out to be empty and insignificant (even while remaining a pivotal event in her own life).

If you're female and if your own memories of high school are less than ideal, I completely recommend this book but also warn you to read this with caution. For me, this brought back memories I haven't even thought about in years. And, worse, it made some of those memories absolutely new-- as if they happened yesterday. Obsessions over insignificant events become magnified . . . analyzing and over-analyzing every response and comment from every person within your social circle. . . reading between the lines when the lines themselves are perfectly clear. . . accepting much less than you deserve. . . giving less to others than they deserve (or maybe worse-- giving more to others than warranted). . . Prep will make all these memories new again.