Search - Prep

This book was so good - I was tempted to keep it for my daughter to read when she grows up. It was a slow start, but after I got into it, I could not put it down. No matter what cliche you were part of in high school, you will be able to relate to the characters. All the things you thought and felt no one else was going through - this author clearly understands. She did a great job capturing the turbulent emotions of teenagers. If you have a teenage girl - you should definitely check out this book. Excellent read!

This was definitely one of the most engrossing novels I've read so far this year. PREP is the story of Lee, an insightful and eloquent (yet insecure) teen from Indiana. Remembering words her middle class father spoke years before ("these are the kinds of houses where they send their sons to boarding school"), she has made it her goal to attend an elite boarding school. And she achieves it-- with a scholarship. The story commences as Lee begins her first year at Ault (think Andover) and concludes as she graduates four years later. Lee's story is told as a kind of memoir-- she's an adult now, recalling these events of years before.

This was an Amazon recommendation since I read Tom Brown's Schooldays. And, it's similar-- a bit. Like Schooldays, History Boys, Charlotte Simmons, and even Harry Potter, etc., the book follows the lives of several teens during their formative years. I'm not sure everyone would like it-- I'm not sure I'd recommend it to my husband, for instance, but it was indeed excellent. The author, Curtis Sittenfeld , really has the voice of a young insecure teen growing into a more confident, but never completely secure, young woman. Initiallly, I thought the author was a man and was completely taken aback-- how could a man actually know this girl so thoroughly? However, Curtis Sittenfeld is indeed a woman. And, the protagonist and her friends and classmates lives were exactly as I remembered my own life and those of my friends and classmates during high school. Truly, the authenticity the author brought to this book-- the dialogue, the events, the crushes, the friendships-- was uncanny.

I've read the negative reviews here, but disagree with some of the reasoning. One reviewer, for instance, writes about how boring the sex scenes were. With all due respect, that reviewer missed the point-- of course the sex was boring and empty and that was the very purpose of writing about it. So much the narrator believed or hoped to be important was or turned out to be empty and insignificant (even while remaining a pivotal event in her own life).

If you're female and if your own memories of high school are less than ideal, I completely recommend this book but also warn you to read this with caution. For me, this brought back memories I haven't even thought about in years. And, worse, it made some of those memories absolutely new-- as if they happened yesterday. Obsessions over insignificant events become magnified . . . analyzing and over-analyzing every response and comment from every person within your social circle. . . reading between the lines when the lines themselves are perfectly clear. . . accepting much less than you deserve. . . giving less to others than they deserve (or maybe worse-- giving more to others than warranted). . . Prep will make all these memories new again.

While I liked the references to the 80s teen culture (as I was also a teen in the 80s), I absolutely could not stand the main character, Lee. I cannot remember reading a book where I so disliked the main character. She was so irritating, I contemplated just quitting the book, but I wanted to see how it ended. I'm glad I read it, but I still can't get over how much I disliked Lee. It made me wonder if the author had any of the character flaws like Lee...and if she did, I feel sorry for her!

It took me forever to get into this book. There was very little character development and I just couldn't like the main character even at the end.

Reviewed by Amanda Dissinger for TeensReadToo.com

Walking through the typical young adult section of a bookstore, there are usually five, maybe even ten, books about a teenage girl, perhaps from a small town, who transfers from that wee little town to a prep school.

Typically, this prep school is in Connecticut, or Massachusetts. Typically, the girl starts out struggling, tries to fit in with the popular crowd, misses her hometown, faces many moral problems, and meets a handsome, promising young prep school boy who shows her the ways of love. Seeing the plot of Curtis Sittenfeld's PREP for the first time, a normal reader would write it off as being another cliché prep school book.

There's where they'd be wrong.

PREP is a searing, creative look at the life of one small-town girl, Lee Fiora, who comes from her home in South Bend, Indiana, to Ault, a prep school in Massachusetts. Exposed to many new kinds of ideas and people, Lee stands on the thin line between misery and naivety as she explores all that her new life has to offer.

Sittenfeld writes about teen angst in a way that doesn't try to make it seem petty or unimportant; she embraces it, and fully understands it. This is what sets the book apart from many other titles. Wallowing in loneliness and heartbreak, the reader feels as if Lee is actually a part of them, and that they are experiencing all of the awkward and horrible events that are occurring in the story.

Lee acts as an opposite-gender Holden Caulfield, the main male character in J.D. Salinger's classic novel THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. She takes everything with a grain of salt and a little bit of dry humor while making wise observations well beyond her years. PREP is bound to become a classic, for its brutally honest interpretation of a time that plagues all of us: high school.

A friend told me about this book two summers ago and I was extremely excited about reading it but to be honest it was more hype then anything else. The book was okay but I was waiting for some great ending that never came.