Spending a day or two with Prep is like reading a detailed painting by Seurat, full of delicious little sketches and expertly crafted observations. The protagonist is, as many reviewers note, difficult to like, but all too easy to identify with.
In pre-cellphone America, middle-class Midwestern Lee enrolls in a New England boarding school populated by Daisy Buchanans and Jordan Bakers, with a smattering of other scholarship students thrown in. We follow her career there to the end, through a few spontaneous, unselfconscious moments and many more inhibited, over-analyzed interludes.
Her roommate Martha, whose character subtleties contrast sharply with Lee's unshaded self, plays a particularly intriguing role in the story. The events that surround Lee's encounter with pre-calculus are some of the most memorable in the book.
I'm surprised the average rating (3.33 stars) for Prep isn't higher. I rate it an absorbing 4 stars and look forward to trying other Sittenfeld fiction.
In pre-cellphone America, middle-class Midwestern Lee enrolls in a New England boarding school populated by Daisy Buchanans and Jordan Bakers, with a smattering of other scholarship students thrown in. We follow her career there to the end, through a few spontaneous, unselfconscious moments and many more inhibited, over-analyzed interludes.
Her roommate Martha, whose character subtleties contrast sharply with Lee's unshaded self, plays a particularly intriguing role in the story. The events that surround Lee's encounter with pre-calculus are some of the most memorable in the book.
I'm surprised the average rating (3.33 stars) for Prep isn't higher. I rate it an absorbing 4 stars and look forward to trying other Sittenfeld fiction.
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