Lee Fiora is a smart girl from Indiana who decides to leave the Heartland to journey to the mysterious, elite world of Ault School in Massachusetts. Her dreams of entering the ranks of her rich peers never quite come to fruition, and Lee is often waiting on the sidelines for her life to come together, and it never quite does. Prep is a leisurely-paced novel that revolves around the internal life of Lee rather than pure plot, which can be both fascinating and frustrating. At 400 pages, this detailed account of Lee's 4 years at Ault makes the reader feel like they have truly joined her in her high school experience. We are with her as she struggles to make friends, feels hopelessly alienated, stumbles through awkward and casual sex experiences, and grapples with being an invisible outsider on scholarship.
Appeals: Character-driven, frustratingly real protagonist, rich with detail. Elements of romance and friendship, but ultimately balanced in a way that addresses the loneliness and unhappiness many people feel during adolescence.
This book shares the alienation of Holden in Catcher in the Rye, the strange solitude and pointlessness of life felt by the main character of The Bell Jar, and the solitude and internal struggle of the main character in Speak (by Laurie Halse Anderson).
If you like stories about alienated, disillusioned youth, you might also enjoy Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks.
Sittenfeld, Curtis. Prep. 2005. 420 pages.
