Prep
The startling coming-of-age novel by the Sunday Times bestselling author of AMERICAN WIFE
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3.4 • 21 Ratings
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
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From the bestselling author of ROMANTIC COMEDY, RODHAM, AMERICAN WIFE and YOU THINK IT, I'LL SAY IT.
'Sittenfeld writes girls and women as they truly are, with shades of light and dark, with and without grace, apologetic as well as fearless' GUARDIAN
'PREP might just be my favourite book' PANDORA SYKES
'Sittenfeld shares with Salinger a knack of capturing, in effortless prose, a teenager mindset' THE TIMES
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Lee Fiora is a shy fourteen-year-old when she leaves small-town Indiana for a scholarship at Ault, an exclusive boarding school in Massachusetts. Her head is filled with images from the school brochure of handsome boys in sweaters leaning against old brick buildings, girls running with lacrosse sticks across pristine athletics fields, everyone singing hymns in chapel. But as she soon learns, Ault is a minefield of unstated rules and incomprehensible social rituals, and Lee must work hard to find - and maintain - her place in the pecking order.
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'PREP is more than a coming of age story - it's a study of social class ... and Sittenfeld renders it with astonishing deftness and clarity.' JENNIFER EGAN
'Straightforward, serious, funny.' London Review of Books
'Sharp, caustic and brilliantly observed' Observer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A self-conscious outsider navigates the choppy waters of adolescence and a posh boarding school's social politics in Sittenfeld's A-grade coming-of-age debut. The strong narrative voice belongs to Lee Fiora, who leaves South Bend, Ind., for Boston's prestigious Ault School and finds her sense of identity supremely challenged. Now, at 24, she recounts her years learning "everything I needed to know about attracting and alienating people." Sittenfeld neither indulges nor mocks teen angst, but hits it spot on: "I was terrified of unwittingly leaving behind a piece of scrap paper on which were written all my private desires and humiliations. The fact that no such scrap of paper existed... never decreased my fear." Lee sees herself as "one of the mild, boring, peripheral girls" among her privileged classmates, especially the ber-popular Aspeth Montgomery, "the kind of girl about whom rock songs were written," and Cross Sugarman, the boy who can devastate with one look ("my life since then has been spent in pursuit of that look"). Her reminiscences, still youthful but more wise, allow her to validate her feelings of loneliness and misery while forgiving herself for her lack of experience and knowledge. The book meanders on its way, light on plot but saturated with heartbreaking humor and written in clean prose. Sittenfeld, who won Seventeen's fiction contest at 16, proves herself a natural in this poignant, truthful book.
