25. Book Review
It has been so long since I read a good
book about high school life. Curtis Sit-
tenfeld’s debut novel Prep is definitely
one of the most engrossing novels I
have read so far this year. High School
life is never as perfect as Disney’s High
School Musical. When we look back,
feelings of nostalgias for adolescence
often veil the high school life with inno-
cence. The cutthroat competition, ruth-
less power plays and rigid status of hi-
erarchy are purposely or unconsciously
neglected. The angst, the insecurity, and
the dark secretes in the most alienating
period of young life was rarely men-
tioned. How painfully I wished there
was someone told me coming-of-age
was not as happy as portrayed in Holly-
wood Soap Opera when I was that age.
However, what I was told was you have
got the education and opportunity your
parents couldn’t dream about, there
was no reason you should suffer from
agony. In Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld gives us
a more accurate picture of adolescence
as an unlovely mix of utter cluelessness,
extreme sensitivity and untempered
drives.
Prep brilliantly chronicles the high-
school years of Lee Fiora, a Midwestern
scholarship student at Ault, a prestig-
ious Massachussets boarding school.
White, unathletic, trust-fund less, pos-
session of no special qualification that
might serve to her existence in Ault’s
breathtakingly rarefied milieu. She used
to be the top students back home, but
in adult she becomes the social outcast
of the hierarchical high school system.
With no sense of belonging, she feels
being alienated. Despite her day to day
agony at Ault, the intensity of Lee’s
experience gives it from the outset its
own throbbing, undeniable legitimacy.
Sittenfeld has this magic talent to recre-
ate the subtle emotions of adolescence
and capture the intensive angst in the
process of coming to age.
However, Prep is not another romantic
story about a high school duckling turns
into white swan. It is so vivid and true
to earth that critics comment it seems
“Sittenfeld has put a bug under the skirt
of a girl in Ault.” In the book, Sittenfeld
discussed serious topics like money and
class, identity and alienation, armature
love, and family. All these themes are
weaved into Lee experience of com-
ing to age, making the book extremely
intense and emotion-provoking.
As a sensitive girl from a lower-middle
class family, Lee finds the peer pres-
sure from her wealth class is somewhat
unbearable. In Ault, “money was every-
where on campus, but it was usually in-
visible. You caught a glimpse of it some-
times in things that were shiny, like the
hood the headmaster’s Mercedes, or the
gold dome of the schoolhouse, or a girl’s
long straight blond hair. But nobody
carries wallet. When you have to pay
for a notebook or a pair of sweatpants
at the campus store, you wrote your
student ID on a form and, later on, your
parents will get the bill.”
From the description above you can
sense the insecure of Lee. As sensitive
as her, she naturally realizes the im-
mense power of money. Some reviewer
thinks she is a snob because of this. But
what they forget is many teenagers are
judgmental and materialistic, regardless
of class, and most are, at some point,
intensely embarrassed by their parents--
It’s part of growing up. This makes Lee
a real person instead of some Disney’s
teenage who always end up doing the
“right” thing.
Prep
Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Publisher: Random House;
First Edition edition
(January 11, 2005)
Language: English
48 49
26. One interesting thing about the narra-
tor of Prep is she an older Lee--a ma-
ture Lee look back to herself, ten years
after graduation. This actually provides
the reader with two perspectives. One
from a young confused teenager, the
other from a mature (but not complete
secure) Lee. Reading Prep will bring
back memories that you don’t even
know you have, and of course, not all of
them are pleasant. If you want to enjoy
reading Prep you have to abandon your
presumption idea about adolescence.
Embrace the life with your arms. If you
truly read it, I guarantee it will be an
experience you will never forget.
If you, at some point of your life, used
to be a loner in the group, you can
easily relate with Lee. Not the blond
Cheerleaders, the athletic sportsmen,
the gorgeous Hispanic, nor the high
achieving suicidal Asians, Lee feels she
like nobody. She’s just Lee -- a plain,
lower middle-class girl who declines
invitations because she fears she’s not
really wanted. Later, she reflected: “Now
I wonder where I had gotten the idea
that for you to participate in a gathering
the other had to really, really, want you
to be there and anything short of rabid
enthusiasm on their part meant you’d
be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the
idea that being a nuisance was that a big
deal?”
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