Prep : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Excellent first novel--uncanny in its accuracy
Review: "Prep" has, like no other novel in recent memory, managed to make me squirm in embarrassment and recognition. Transfer Lee's four years of boarding school to four years of college and, eerily, that was my experience. It's both a delight and a terror to encounter one's feelings and thoughts articulated so perfectly. As I read, I was transported back to those four tumultuous years when you can't see the forest for the trees. Strangely, I am unable to maintain a decently objective distance from this novel--is it good because it's good on its own merits, or because I am awed by the experience of reading it? What I am struck by is the knowledge that these events are being narrated by an older Lee, at some point in the future--watching how that fact colors the stories she tells (most of sophomore year is missing, for example) and how she tells them. In all, a fabulous debut.

Rating:
Summary: I loved it!
Review: I am trying to read as this book as slowly as I can to completely savor each and every word. I fell in love with the story from the first page. I am about halfway through and I don't want the story to end. The author has a wonderful talent of bringing her character, Lee, to life. I cannot wait until her next book!

Rating:
Summary: One Silly Book
Review: I had hoped to find a book that would somehow continue the serious social criticism and art of Tom Wolfe's "I am charlotte Simmons". Instead I found this superficial, politically correct fluffed up fantasy version of pseudo elite culture, equivilent to a true romance type genre...shallowly written for those who don't want to think...nothing wrong with that I have my own favorite fluff novels...but let us not pretend that this book is anything more than continuation of a superficial version of angst for those who write professional reviews. You can do as well reading a magazine, watching some tv show or the like. This is not a book for a reader looking for literature, art or challenge. Why do the professional reviewers beat the drum for this drivel?

Rating:
Summary: Pathetic and Frustrating
Review: I will concede that this book was well written - but that is it. I found this character to be so incredibly frustrating and pathetic. Maybe it was because I could not relate to what she was going through - but is it really true that all those who feel like outsiders are so completely passive about improving their experiences? Lee was SO ANNOYING! I also thought that the book REALLY rambled at times and I found these parts to be rather boring.

Rating:
Summary: The book that I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS tried to be
Review: The author, first published as a teenager in "Seventeen" magazine and a grad of both Stanford and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, nails teenagers dead-on. On the surface, the book has a very commercial feel, and I read it cover-to-cover in two sittings. It's a great yarn about growing up and the dysfunctionalism of adolescence. But there are a myriad of deeper layers to this story. It's a discussion of class in American culture. It's a narrative analysis of feminine deference inside male systems. It's a sociological deconstruction of clicks. And Lee Fiora, the prep schooler through whose eyes we watch everything, is one of the most complex and nuanced teenagers you'll find in literature.

Honestly, PREP was a book I read way back in August in manuscript form; however, I didn't really appreciate it until after I finished Tom Wolfe's I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS a couple weeks ago. You don't realize how well Curtis Sittenfeld nails the voice in PREP until you read a book in which someone completely misses the mark. There are books where the author takes on the persona of the teen protagonist--Salinger of course, PREP, Tom Perrotta's JOE COLLEGE, even to a lesser extent DBC Pierre's VERNON GOD LITTLE (a decent but not great book, no matter what the Booker Prize committee said). Then there are books that sound like a 70-year-old man pretending he remotely has a clue about the culture and social norms of today's young people. I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS is most definitely the latter.

Pick up a copy of PREP. Recommend it to your friends. Put down your Bret Easton Ellis, your Hunter S. Thompson, your Dave Eggers--Because I think you could be staring at the next big generational novel.

Rating:
Summary: Well-written but dull
Review: This book is undeniably well-written. But a novel also needs interesting characters and intriguing plot development. I found that "Prep" lacked both. There are literally places in the book where you can skip several pages and not miss a single important story point. Above in one of the editorial reviews it is noted that the narrator, Lee, "sees herself as 'one of the mild, boring, peripheral girls' among her privileged classmates." She is indeed that. I don't read novels to read about mild, boring, peripheral characters. With all the undeserved comparisons to Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" being made, I'd suggest reading that instead.

Rating:
Summary: Very good book
Review: This is a well-written, thoroughly plotted, and enjoyable book following the four high school years of Lee, an outsider at a prestigious prep school. After you get past the first 20-30 pages, you'll likely be obsessive about this book until about 300 pages or so. The book then begins to wane and becomes tiresome through an unnecessarily depressing ending. Sittenfeld goes for effect, but the effect seems overused, and I wished it was a slightly bit happier. The author than indulges the reader with the futures of many of the main characters in the book.

This book contains quite a bit of social criticism and a acute observations. The narration flows on like a conversation and keeps you turning the pages. Highly recomended to anyone but those who often complain of books or movies being "formulaic." (Of course this book is somewhat formulaic--but it is also unique and entertaining.)

Rating:
Summary: Story of an Outsider
Review: Upon picking up the novel Prep, it wasn't easy to put it down while reading it or to forget it afterwards. Prep told the story of Lee Fiora, a painfully shy girl at a prestigious boarding school on a scholarship. The book takes the reader through all four years of high school, omitting the summers when Lee returns home. While the overall plot wasn't what kept the book moving along, it was the brilliant characterization that the author placed in Lee. Highlights of the book are Freshman Spring and Junior Winter. In Freshemen Spring Lee begins to make friends, and a sense of relief and happiness comes over her; from there on she knows she won't be completely alone. In Junior Winter she goes back on a forgotten friendship and starts to date a "townie." Throughtout the book, Lee is in love with the most popular, best-looking boy in her class, and their affair is described later, in her senior year. You begin to love and hate some of the characters...the ones Lee treats well and the ones she treats badly. Basically, Prep is the story of an outsider, an isolated girl who just wants people to understand and love her. I would reccomend this book to many, as Prep is a different take on the fantasy idea of boarding schools.

Rating:
Summary: richly rewarding
Review: Well, the voice and tone of this lovely debut are dead-on perfect, and that's a tremendous foundation for a ripping good read. All the adolescent drama (mostly internal) is evoked marvelously well, and the prose is steady and sure. For a book without a huge dose of plot, it's a real page turner. A lot of this has to do with the fact that each chapter is somewhat self-contained--like individual short stories--and well crafted. Anyway, it's a winner.

Rating:
Summary: All prepped up and no place to go
Review: What clear and concise writing there is in PREP! A story that seems simple at the outset, compelled me to keep reading and in one day I completed the book. What a relief to have the first person narrative -- knowing that Lee makes it through and somehow integrates all of her experiences into that wonderful reflective melancholy I often experience when looking back on high school or intense times in my life. It captures the 'teen-years' phase in life and also left lots of room for thought on approaching life in general. A superb read. If you enjoyed clear writing with complex psychological implications such as McCrae's CHILDREN'S CORNER, then you'll love this book as well.