Prep: A Novel

This was a surprisingly great read and I loved it. I can see why it is a New York times bestseller. It took me about 5 pages to "get into" it. I wasn't immediately in love with the main character, but the author built so many amazing characters around her that really made me understand her more, that I was totally "in" after that.Adolescence is difficult. This is a great book for a young girl or boy navigating the murky and sometimes harsh waters of high school. Outcasts will find this book refreshing and meaningful, and everyone will be able to relate to the complicated social events that high school brings to our lives. I found myself reflecting back to "who" I perceived myself to be in high school. And I found myself being more empathetic to remembering those who probably shared the main character in this books angst.The social issues that are presented here are real and complex. Race and gender politics, as well as the difficult experience that high school presents is quite compellingly written in this book. The story is told from a "looking back" point of view from the older, and more reflective quality of the main character. I liked this. The main character is 14 years old and not really able to be compassionate or understanding of herself. But the story is told from a point of view of compassion and empathy of the main characters "older" self, and that is what makes this story move forward and come from a more wiser and deeper perspective, and from all the angles of what surviving a pre school would be like.

What did I like about this book? Three things. First, it engaged me right from the outset. While I can't completely disagree with those who pointed out the relative absence of plot movement, still, I was never bored and was always interested to see what would happen next. It was one of those books, where, when I wasn't reading it, I was looking forward to getting back to it. And isn't that really the threshold test of any novel? Does it engage you? If the answer is yes, then it's a good book, no matter what else one might say about it.Second, it was very well-written and thought-provoking. It was the kind of book that stayed with me after I was done reading it and that doesn't happen with every book, even some good ones.Finally, having gone to a prep school myself (although not coed at the time), alot of Lee's experiences resonated strongly with me and I felt like I knew exactly what she was talking about with respect to certain aspects of school life. (It's interesting how some of the reviewers say that Lee's experiences bore no resemblance to their own, while others said the exact opposite-I'm in the latter category.) In particular, though it's a cocoonish, somewhat surreal world, it still becomes your home, for better or worse--such that, when you leave the campus, it feels like you're leaving your "real home" and going to some alien environment even if that happens to be your actual home. At the very end of the book, Lee talks about seeing people at the train station "whose lives had nothing at all to do with Ault". That may seem obvious to most people, but I know exactly what she meant--if you're in prep school long enough, that actually comes as somewhat of a revelation.Despite all of this, there were certain drawbacks to the book, and virtually all of them relate to the annoying Lee herself. A first person narrative requires, virtually by necessity, someone who is observant. Most frequently, that person will be introspective as well--i.e. they can observe themselves as well as others. With these qualities often comes some self-criticism, because who among us would not be critical of ourselves, at least in some degree? Thus, for example, it would be highly unusual for a book like this to be written by the coolest, most popular kid in the school.However, that being said, Lee's degree of self-loathing, total insecurity, total lack of self-confidence, lack of scruples (not just cheating on a test, but knowingly compromising herself repeatedly when she thought it would help her curry favor with the cool kids), combined to make her a truly unlikable character. The fact that she has full self-awareness of these character traits don't help the situation. In fact, one of the paradoxes of this book is that Lee (or at least the author speaking through Lee) tells a great story, despite being not only a bore herself but an unsympathetic bore.I also didn't really care for the long last chapter, where Cross re-emerges on the scene. I felt like I was reading the private diary with the puppy love musings of a 12-year old--who is writing totally for herself with no interest in an audience. Lee went from making interesting observations about other aspects of prep school life to page after page of the most banal and hackneyed comments imaginable when talking about Cross. It felt like she was picking apart a clover and saying to herself: "He loves me, he loves me not", over and over and over.I know that there are those (particularly women) who would defend Lee on the grounds that she is so REAL and authentic. They write that "Lee is me!" or at least can strongly identify with her. I don't dispute that she is real and that her character resonates with alot of women. However, this is still a novel intended for an audience. I'll bet that the diary of a 9th grader who writes for 50 pages about whether or not some boy likes her (or even knows she exists) may be "real" for alot of women too, but that doesn't make for greating writing (or reading). Nevertheless, despite this, and on balance, for the reasons given above, I would still easily recommend this book to anyone.

There is more racism, elitism and prejudice embedded in each of Lee's cutting observation then there is in blatant off the wall movies like American History X. This book is amazingly well written, but also at times stunningly shallow and depressing, revealing that our American culture is indeed as empty as the flood of commercials and insipid moovies that influence the modern mentality.Lee is supposed to be the sympathetic hero, but she spends most of the book avoiding the unpopular people, yet secretly knowing herself superior to the popular ones (even the beautiful Aspeth and the beloved Cross are at one point only geeks undeserving of their belovedness). She blatantly calls people like herself the "undeservingly unpopular" emphasizing in the next lines that "the ugly and the poor" are the deserving ones. I am sure if a law was passed making ugliness a crime, Lee Fiora would promptly approve of it. More often than not, she dismissed people on the basis of their ethnicity or their income, and all the while attempts to portray herself as a caring, insightful person whom more intelligent students recognize as being "real" (the author here revealing her obvious sympathy and identification with her more than lightly flawed hero).The writer fails to distance herself from the subtle racisim, complex of superiority and hunger for elitism that her character (and I supsect, more of American teenagers than I want to know) so desperately succumbs to: the only thief in the school is of course the poor black girl; the Jewish girl is "too obviously Jewish" because she has a big nose; the only hispanic girls worthy of mention are either tacky flashy-dressing nuveau rich or dismissable "minorities on scholarships" (whom Lee never considers as possible friendships)... and these are just a few of the world of "us vs them" that Settenfield wants us to feel drawn to.But there is something about Lee that is at times disarming, her ability to articulate complex emotions with such precision and clarity establishes Sittenfield as a sensitive and sophisticated writer. She is able to keep us interested, if only for the morbid curiosity of seeing Lee continuing to blunder, missing chance after chance to connect with her gaol of being accepted, battling actively agains her own self interest, leaving readers wondering if she will succeed in completely self-destructing. Lee's neuroticism is painted with such precision and depth as to redeem in many ways all the pettiness of the elitism and racism that surrounds the Ault subculture. While Lee Fiora may not be the most likeable heroine, she is indeed original and complex.The book is impeccable in its building of tension, cutting insights and subtle ironies, but ultimately reveals the ugly muck and murk of America's obsession with whiteness, richess and power, with remarkably brutal snobbery and deprecation for honesty, diversity (social, racial, personal or financial) idealism and wholesomeness.As intentional social criticism it would have been brilliant. Unfortunately there is much to indicate that the writer herself is fascinated by this world and wants us to respect it. Depressing.

This boarding school story is told as a (rather lengthy) reflection on the past (though this is only clear as now and then she says "some years later I remembered"), and this gives it a certain coolness. Thus the occasional vulgarities are odd and conspicuous. The protagonist is very attuned to her own emotions, as though watching herself as a different person, less understanding of the emotions of those around her. If she were reading the text direct to camera as a monologue she would appear more than a little neurotic. Other than this she is neither particularly nice nor nasty, just "another ordinary looking girl who hung out most of the time with her roommate" (p. 209). The pupils all act and speak like university students, as is common in US high school series. Or maybe teenagers really do speak in such coherent sentences over there. I could not quite see why her father hits her in the middle, or why her boyfriend is so abusive, or why she puts up with him. But possibly I am insufficiently sensitive to understand these issues. Other than this, not much actually happens. Though not entirely clear from the cover, perhaps it is for teenage girls, and I, Melachi, am an interloper on this interloper. Whatsoever, I have released it to the library of a beach bar in Gambia, and who can tell what interloper cubed will stare in from there. There is a cat on p. 306.

Can’t wait to read

I enjoyed this but have to admit it's not one of my favourite novels in her ouvre. The characters are strong but I just couldn't relate to the storyline and it felt like I'd read it before. Still, it was well written as usual and worth the read.

el principal problema que tuve con el libro es que todos los personajes son multidimencionales y super interesantes y la realidad es que la protagonista es un personaje cuando mucho bidimensional, totalmente plano, predecible y aburrido. no puedo creer que al final de cientos de páginas nose llevemos lo mismo con lo que entramos. el crecimiento de la chica fue nulo, se fue siendo una peor persona que al principio y no le importó todo lo bueno o malo positivo o negativo de su experiencia. pésimo desarrollo de personaje.sin embargo cross, la barbie de la escuela y todos los demas fueron realmente interesantes.

Nette etwas depressive Geschichte, guter Einblick wie Prep School so abläuft für Außenstehenden. Das Buch war einwandfrei (obwohl gebraucht) und kam nach etwa 1 Woche.