At first, an engaging read in the recollections of Midwestern, middle class, plain Lee Fiora; then, it is...

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	• Prep: A Novel Curtis Sittenfeld Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005 - 448 pages average customer review:based on 482 reviews view larger image
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Lighten up, guys!

I got a kick out of this book, which I'd call "beach reading." Miss Sittenfeld certainly provoked some opinions, didn't she? I'm not sure it was ever intended to be a social manifesto . . . just one character's experience. The people freaking out are just SOOOOOO "LMC" . . .

I must have been really well-adjusted or something.

A class act

Prep-a story of Lee Fiora a 14 year old from Indiana pursues and then attends a prestigious prep school. The story entertains with an insiders view of the microcosim of prep school, while Lee plows her way through class, gender, friendship, sex, and family issues. At times the angst in the book was stressful to me as the reader. When I finished I almost felt as if I come through a second adolesence. It jarrs your memory as to what you work through to become and adult.

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At first, an engaging read in the recollections of Midwestern, middle class, plain Lee Fiora; then, it is verbose and graphic

Lee Fiora is an interesting teenager. She becomes, for whatever reason, interested in attending boarding school. All we know is that she completes the application process independently of outside influences. Lee tells us that she her public high school is not of the same caliber as Ault School. With a scholarship, Lee is off to Ault.

And so begins our look into Lee's experiences at Ault. Her family and hometown friends are peripheral- she focuses solely on her time at Ault. We discover Lee's family only through her days at Ault- parents weekend, Christmas vacation senior year, phone calls. We do learn about Dede, Amy, Sin-Jun, Martha, Conchita, Cross and many other Ault students. We see how their lives affect Lee. I could not put down this book.

Then, the grown-up Lee starts to tell us about their futures. Sin-Jun's "illness" and what happens much later is thrown into the mix. Lee also mixes her past and present in her stories. I wasn't all that interested in the grown up Lee, the 26 year old Sin-Jun, etc. I wanted to know every little detail about the teenaged Lee Fiora, Sin-Jun, Martha, etc.

Anyway, Lee is a very disturbed, very complex teenager. She is the epitome of teen angst, insecurity, and fluctuating hormones. She shares with us all the teenaged taboos we all wished we could have shared. I felt that I got to know Lee quite well.

The end of the book is satisfying. We get our closure on the lives of Dede, Cross, Sin-Jun, Darden, Aspeth, etc. As for Lee, well, the grown-up Lee is never quite sure of herself. We're left hanging because Lee is a work in progress. All we really know is that her clearest life experience happens on the T. And maybe that is all that matters- the small insights into life's mysteries...

Lee Fiora doesn't have the answers, but she can take you on a fascinating journey through her PREP school.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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.

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