Point Containing Books Prep
| Title | : | Prep |
| Author | : | Curtis Sittenfeld |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 420 pages |
| Published | : | November 22nd 2005 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published January 17th 2005) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Young Adult. Womens Fiction. Chick Lit. Contemporary. Coming Of Age. School Stories. Boarding School. Adult Fiction |
Curtis Sittenfeld
Paperback | Pages: 420 pages Rating: 3.39 | 58893 Users | 4775 Reviews
Chronicle Conducive To Books Prep
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.Itemize Books Concering Prep
| Original Title: | Prep |
| ISBN: | 081297235X (ISBN13: 9780812972351) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Lee Fiora, Cross Sugarman, Martha Porter, Aspeth Montgomery, Dede Schwartz, Sin Jun, Conchita Maxwell, David Bardo, Aubrey |
| Setting: | Massachusetts(United States) South Bend, Indiana(United States) |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Longlist (2006) |
Rating Containing Books Prep
Ratings: 3.39 From 58893 Users | 4775 ReviewsRate Containing Books Prep
Again, I was shocked by the reviews after hopping on Goodreads. Only this time, I loved it and yet, there were so many haters. Can't a girl get a break? Am I forever doomed to be the outsider? Okay, a little overly dramatic, to be sure. There are MANY more who seemed to have enjoyed it than despised it, but the haters were hanging out at the top of the reviews, so that made it seem worse than the reality.Yes, I loved Prep...shoot me. I always wanted to go to boarding school. I, in fact, used to***NO SPOILERS***Sittenfeld impressed me with this story. I wasnt expecting something as deep as I got from Prep--which isnt to say I was expecting it to be frivolous, just that its more than meets the eye. The setting is a boarding school and all that accompanies that, but Prep isnt about the petty and superficial drama of wealthy teen snobs. That would make it not worth reading. Prep is told from the first-person perspective of socially anxious Lee, a lower-middleclass scholarship student
I loathed this book, really really hated it. I kept reading, hoping for the moment when the narrator would stop complaining, stop blaming everyone else for her misery, but the moment never came. She finished high school, went on with her life, and yet KEPT COMPLAINING about boarding school. It is easy to take pot shots at New England boarding schools, and at high school in general, but this book lacks any humor and the narrator lacks any self-awareness. I don't know that I would have liked this
Having attended a prep school myself, I found the descriptions of prep school logistically were fairly accurate. It was a strange flashback into life with boarding students and the activities/events that surround going to an elite private school that focuses greatly on matriculation into Ivy Leagues. Despite the vague nostalgia that I felt at times, the protagonist was extremely hard to identify with, although she did have characteristics that could have made her more sympathetic. What I believe
I always say that if a writer can evoke complete hatred and dislike for their protagonist from me, then they must be a good writer (Lucinda Rosenfeld's What She Saw... comes to mind). So, in that regard, Curtis Sittenfeld is an excellent writer (perhaps it's a last name thing) but Prep sucks. Two reasons why I hated Prep: 1) NOTHING happens. I don't mind episodic novels in which each chapter is a tiny event that comes together as a whole (Peter Darbyshire's Please is an excellent example of
the book that traumatized me for the weekend: Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. Ms. Sittenfeld writes very well, maybe too well- I have to say, she did a fine job planting the image of the drama in my mind, but now it's burned too well, and since the images/ideas aren't exactly the sort I want to keep in my head, I wish I didn't have to remember it. The main character isn't my favorite person, but the reader is still compelled to understand her.The freaky points are: a) I used to want to go to a prep
Curtis Sittenfeld popped up on my radar after I read two of her stories in The New Yorker - Gender Studies & The Prairie Wife. She's got a book of collected short stories coming out next year - too long for me to wait - so I decided to give this novel a try. I'm glad I did, though I suspect it's not for everyone. Here we have the tale of Lee Fiora, a Midwestern girl on her own at a hoity-toity East coast prep school. Much of Lee's experiences are universal, and shared by young adults at any
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