When I went to college I was shocked to meet kids who had actually attended boarding school. I had grown up on a steady diet of boarding school literature, but conceptually, it seemed so preposterous. You went to boarding school if you were European and from the 19th century, not if you were American and born in the early 90s. I befriended one girl who attended a Massachusetts boarding school as a day student. When I asked her about the experience, she shook her head and said, “Never send your kids to boarding school. It fucks you up.”As I came to know more ex-boarding school students, her generalization gained credence. The boarding school kids knew seemingly every possible way to consume alcohol, with some methods so ingenious I couldn’t help but wonder if their education truly was of a higher caliber than mine. They were fully formed adults who behaved like they were in their late 20s. Meanwhile, the rest of us floundered about, worried about breaking dorm occupancy rules. After reading Prep I understand them better. I know how they came to be this way at the mere age of 18. In Prep Curtis Sittenfeld presents an authentic portrait of boarding school life that, for any sane parent at least, should serve as a massive flashing warning sign before sending any child away to school. Our protagonist Lee Fiora decides to apply to an East Coast boarding school in a fit of precociousness and derring-do at the age of 14. She leaves her parents and calm Midwestern existence for a more exciting life at Ault School. Again: at the age of 14. It goes horribly, of course. She must face the gender, race, and class discrimination that props up the ivy-covered brick façade of Ault. She navigates loneliness. She struggles to answer this question: do I want to change myself, peel away my me-ness in order to fit into this archaic institution or do I want to alienate myself from everyone by becoming a conscientious objector to this lifestyle? She narrates her four years at Ault after the fact as an adult, and it is clear that even after maturing outside this fishbowl, she has no good answer to this question.Two disclaimers: 1. This is not chick-lit, despite the title and pink belted cover. 2. It is an uncomfortable read. If we’re supposed to read this book as chick-lit, it’s ridiculously marketed. It has too much bite to be considered chick-lit, with its extraordinarily detailed narration and its casual indictment of its wealthy and waspy characters. Lee’s perspective is devastatingly realistic, apparently so authentic that some have questioned how biographical this story is. The goodreads reviews for this book are atrocious. Most people seem to hate Lee because she is always a bystander and never an actor. I must admit that even as an introvert, I found Lee’s introversion and resulting passivity infuriating and occasionally painful. She cannot decide how she wants to participate in this ridiculous life she’s accidentally chosen for herself at age 14 and thus she’s listless. She moves nowhere, being careful to make no obvious mistakes but because of that, truly making every mistake. As she says, I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.Teenagers live in state of metamorphosis and high school is their chrysalis. Imagine if your chrysalis is inhabited by the spoiled offspring of Manhattanite bankers and national senators. Imagine if the floral pattern on your bedspread determines whether you are popular or not. Imagine that if you pine after a boy, you can never approach him; he will pursue, you will be pursued. Imagine if your chrysalis cannot be cracked open at the end of each school day when you return home; you live among your peers in this extreme environment for four straight years.Actually stop imagining that because it’s horrifying. It’s obvious how such a life could ruin a mere child. How can you decide who you want to be in such conditions? I loved Sittenfeld’s largely plotless but wholly profound depiction of these conditions because it allowed me to vicariously live them without suffering their consequences. And after the melancholy final page, I was forcefully reminded me of three things: 1. we can only hope we have good parents 2. only by being rich, white, and male can you live your life effortlessly 3. boarding school will fuck you up.
In her ruthless efforts to make a book that depicts how prep school “really” is, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep forgets that in order for a novel to work things must happen. Assumedly, the book was supposed to be a coming-of-age novel wherein the fish-out-of-water protagonist Lee Fiora, learns to exceed the repressive bounds of prep school and get over her personal issues. However, this is not the case. Instead the book is horribly lopsided, Sittenfeld spends three hundred pages having the protagonist shuffle around feeling awkward and passing judgment on everything she sees followed by a hundred pages of high school events where Lee learns nothing. It seems nothing can escape Lee’s annoyance and judgment. Here is her description of a classmate named Clara, with whom she barely shares a conversation with the entire novel:She was big…and she favored tapered, bleached jeans and long dumpy skirts. In her demeanor, there was something spacey and innocent, something slow and not discontented, and it was these qualities I found so irritating.” (226)When Clara becomes very upset when her roommate is in the hospital after nearly dying Lee mocks her for this too: “Clara was bawling as openly and recklessly as an infant: her face was splotchy pink, and tears were streaming down her face…[it] was both grotesque and spellbinding” (212). All this occurs while Lee is wondering why it is so hard for her to make friends at school. Gee! I can’t imagine why the sullen, awkward, hypercritical girl isn’t everyone’s best friend!The final 100 pages of the novel is mostly concerned with Lee’s relationship with Cross Sugarman (yes, Sittenfeld really does love overly-romantic names) who almost holds her hand at the book’s beginning and who she stalks for the next three years.Sittenfeld is clearly drawing on two sources: The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye. Yet she fails to realize what makes either great. She employs the “passive narrator” techniques used in The Great Gatsby, but forgets that in Fitzgerald’s book other characters actually do things. On the other hand, Sittenfeld adamantly pulls away from any character that has the slightest potential of being interesting. Lee’s first friend, the angry cynical Little Washington shows instant promise, being separated from her twin and one of the few students of color at the school. So, of course, she is almost instantly sent away. The same happens to Conchita, the eccentric half-Mexican daughter of an oil magnate whose bizarre appearance, as well as her enormous wealth, set her apart from other students. Instead of the two outcasts banding together Conchita is switched out for Martha, a boring girl whose notable trait is not getting upset.Though both The Catcher in the Rye and Prep follow highly-introverted students, Salinger’s Holden Caulfeld has highly complex thoughts, though they are not always well articulated. Sittenfeld’s Lee spends an awful lot of time thinking by herself but her “big bang”thought at the end of the novel is that rich students and poor students are different. She never gets any further than this.Adding irritation is Sittenfeld’s constant use of flash forward. Any immediacy or suspense in the novel is constantly thwarted by flash forwards. Will an ill friend recover? Will Lee’s relationship work out? Will Lee pull up her math grade enough to graduate? All are answered as soon they are introduced.All in all Sittenfeld’s novel is a disappointment and the obnoxious nature of her protagonist reminds me of why I was so happy to get out of high school.Read all of my reviews at: http://meagan-maguire.blogspot.com/
What do You think about Prep (2005)?
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 book more if I had read it during high school because the author, who comes of as fairly self-righteous in interviews, denies that this book is meant for young adults or "chick-lit" readers. You'd be better served reading an unhappy teenager's blog.
—Lea
A for AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaangstPrep, a story told by the talented Curtis Sittenfeld, was hard to put down. The narrator, Lee Fiora, an unremarkable girl from South Bend, Indiana, does a remarkable thing. At 13 she decides to apply to East Coast Prep schools and winds up spending an angst-ridden four years at Ault School just outside of Boston, Mass.("How was I supposed to understand, when I applied at the age of thirteen, that you have your whole life to leave your family?")This is the story of EVERYTHING that goes on inside her head. The quote above is just one example. It's all about observation and laying bare the atmosphere that is Prep School as experienced by an outsider. And this outsider believed herself to be "a petty, angry, impotent person."Lee outlines her memories by grade level, (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) and focuses on major and minor events shaping each year. The detail is both exquisite and annoyingly sharp and pulls you into each scene as though it's happening in the now rather than some 20 years ago. It's personal and revealing and I can't imagine anyone who didn't experience at least some of the same thoughts during high school--no matter what school or what place.Freshman year it's all about roommates and assimilating to what is for Lee a foreign climate. It's also the year where she first develops a crush on a golden boy named Cross Sugarman. Other students, Dede and Martha, for example, use their time at Ault to get the education they were promised; however, Lee--an average to poor student--spends all her time fantasizing about Cross. As the years sail by, Lee learns to deal with all things associated with coming of age, except for what it truly means to fit in.Great storytelling, tremendous character development, extremely well written and I highly recommend this book. I have to say it reminded me a little bit of four years at Hogwarts, without the wizardry, of course, and a heroine who unlike Harry Potter, wasn't popular and had no self-confidence.
—Michele
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 school. After having read this, I'll never want to be a prep schooler, am glad I was not one, and I will not be sending my kids to one. b) Her observations about social interactions are relateable to real-life ones and therfore very believable e.g. about the African-american student's advice about black kids around white rich people c) the main character goes to my alma mater, and that's about where I don't understand....b/c I've never met any prepschoolers at my alma mater, and the book makes it sound like my school is some second tier toss-up alternative, b/c all the prep schoolers would not be interested in attending it. And more scary: maybe I had that attitude too??? d) the main character's feelings especially about her embarassment of her family- that HIT HOME. Where you're embarassed about people you love, and never have had to feel embarassment about before, but do inexplicably. I wish I could explain it to my parents.e) on the bright side, I never had the lurid night-life of the main character. (shudder- more reason to keep your kids at home where you know what they're doing, than let them go live at a co-ed school).
—Christine
