Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #278672 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-10
• Released on: 2007-12-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The pseudonymous Jackson (an "acclaimed short story writer and novelist") plumbs the lives of those who pace the halls at New York City's exclusive Griffin School in this accomplished novel. Varied in age and income bracket, the cast is finely drawn if familiar: Julianne Coopersmith, a middle-class teen with an overprotective mother, attends Griffin on scholarship; Morgan Goldfine, Julianne's best friend whose mother recently died, is awash in grief; Michael Avery, Julianne's boy wonder boyfriend, is Harvard bound; and Kathryn "Lazy" Hoffman, Griffin's headmistress, is having a professionally verboten affair with a teacher. Cracks form in Julianne and Michael's relationship after Michael shows signs of mental instability, though Julianne's loathe to give up on him, even when his symptoms hint at violent tendencies. Morgan mopes her way through the school year, and Julianne's mother strikes up an unlikely friendship with Michael's mother. Kathryn's affair, predictably, becomes public knowledge, sparking domestic and professional upheaval. If the plot packs few surprises, Jackson's rendering of relationships—both toxic and positive, filial and friendly—is flawlessly executed as she flits from social strata to social strata. The similarity in cover art between this novel and Prep isn't for nothing. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—This novel about the members of an elite school community is told from multiple viewpoints. "Lazy" Hoffman, headmistress at the prestigious Griffin School in New York City, is having an affair with one of the teachers, despite the fact that she has a prince of a husband. Julianne is a scholarship student whose mother, Dee, is a former novelist who now drives a cab. Julianne's boyfriend, Michael, is the perfect Griffin student-brilliant and Harvard-bound-but also a victim of bipolar disorder. Michael's mother, Susan, seems to care more about her dog than her son. And Julianne's best friend, Morgan, has just lost her mother to cancer. The school year progresses, and each of these situations develops, the most painful of which is the relationship between Julianne and Michael. She feels that she is the only one who understands him, and that she must not, under any circumstances, let him down. The relationship is doomed to end tragically, and it does. There are not any major surprises here, but the book is well written, and the characters are appealing. Some of the themes (and even the title and cover art) are reminiscent of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep (Random, 2005). Like that book, this novel presents more of an adult than a teen view of high school life, but it will nevertheless appeal to teens, with its strong rendering of the major relationships and its fast pace, aided by lots of dialogue and a smattering of e-mail exchanges.—Sarah Flowers, Santa Clara County Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Like Christina Schwartz'sAll Is Vanity (2002) and Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep (2005), this novel, written under a pseudonym by a well-established fiction writer, centers on a ritzy Manhattan private school. The plot is crowded with characters. Kathryn "Lazy" Hoffman, headmistress at Griffin School, relieves job stress through adultery; teens Julianne and Michael are in love, despite brilliant, mentally ill Michael's abuse; Dee, Julianne's divorced mother, drives a cab to support her writing career; Susan, Michael's mother, seems more comfortable loving her dog than her husband or child. There are too many plotlines that never develop into a cohesive whole. Also distancing is the narrative's shifting, satirical tone, which celebrates stereotypes and asks readers to alternately mock and then sympathize with the characters. Still, readers may delight in the author's acutely observed details from the lives of Manhattan elites (and those who share their world), and there are some poignant messages about ambition, love, class, and marriage--what holds it together and what sends it "circling the drain." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Really hard to finish
Though it's not the worst book I've ever read, it is certainly the worst I've read in several years. I could hardly make myself finish it, but soldiered on in hopes that it would get better. The writing style is stale and unoriginal, and the characters are pathetic. By the middle of the book, I realized that I didn't care what happened to any of them. The characters all seem like pitiful stereotypes with no redeeming and/or original qualities, while the description of the private school is laughable. The most ridiculous character of all is the student who is an Arab prince and robs fellow students at gunpoint for no apparent reason! Save your time and money and give this book a miss!

witty and penetrating
I was quite drawn to this for several reasons, the most intriguing of which was that the author, a respected and lauded literary novelist (who has published in the New Yorker), had decided to bring this out under a pseudonym. Also, the cover art was quite fetching. I started reading in the bookstore, was hooked immediately and decided to buy it for a Valentine's gift -- which I still plan on giving -- but couldn't help finishing the book before I wrapped it.

Only an enormously talented literary writer could tred so delicately between wit, humor, irony and poignancy. This book is obviously meant to be a satire, but there are so many moments in which the reader is gripped and moved. The world of the Upper Eastside private school is somewhat familiar to me; however, I believe Jackson gives it a fresh spin. Beyond this, beneath this satire is a cautionary tale that is very current insofar as it can be related to all the newspaper stories that we've read recently about how some parents will do anything to get their children into the right college. All of this is juxtaposed with hilarious set pieces about life at private school. And Jackson has a great feel for the one-liner. She gets off plenty of zingers.

I love how at the center of the novel a frustrated novelist forced to work as a cab driver is, along with her daughter, trying to negotiate a private school world populated by people who are so much richer than she is. You feel for her as you do her daughter.

Invariably this book will be compared to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. They are two very different books. While Sittenfeld's book is fresh and full of first novel brio, it is very much a first novel, soft in places, not fuly formed, jejeune. However, it's clear when you're reading Jackson that this woman is an accomplished pro. She has complete and effortless command of her narrative and her characters. Her dialogue crackles with wit. I gobbled up this book. Now I can't help wondering who Jackson might be.

For Me, It Just Doesn't Hold a Candle to Prep. . .
I don't know if my view of Posh is at all altered because I just last year read and adored Prep, another novel about rich prep schools, but. . .when all is said and done, Posh just doesn't hold a candle to Prep - at least not in my opinion.

Posh covered such a short time period during the senior year of the students. Prep was a story that spanned four years. I felt much, much more connected to the characters in Prep than I ever could to the characters in Posh. Worse, I realized upon finishing this book, I not only didn't feel connected to the characters in Posh, but I could hardly care less about them. Are any of the characters really worthy of truly remembering when the book ends? I immediately knew upon finishing Prep that I would want to re-read it again (and have in fact gone back and read certain chapters again), but with Posh I had the exact opposite reaction. I could be wrong, but I don't think I'll ever pick it up again.

Not to say that Posh wasn't a good novel or well-written. It was certainly both. I just think I wanted and expected more when I picked it up. And since that probably does have a lot to do with having read and enjoyed Prep first, maybe that's not fair. I'd be curious to know if the readers giving it such high reviews had not read Prep or another book on prep schools before reading Posh. Or maybe they just have different tastes, and that's perfectly fine.

For the record, I liked that Posh had short chapters that told mini stories of the different characters. It made it a quick, easy read, and I'd be lying if I'd say that I didn't want to continue reading it. I did. Although, now that I think back, all the chapters did seem very much the same, no matter the character they were centered on. I don't really think there was a lot of variety in dialogue or tone.

Bottom line, I can see why some people would like this book, and that's fine. Myself, I personally found it too short and the characters too one-dimensional for me to become truly emotionally invested. And I need that. Knowing the sympathy and understanding I felt for the characters in Prep, I can't help but be disappointed that Posh was so far from that ideal for me. No hard feelings, just my honest opinion.