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Booklog: Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld
Apr. 22nd, 2008 12:12 pmI haven't posted one of these in a long time, and I'm not sure it's a good idea to break my fast with something I so thoroughly disliked, but... well, it's rare that I've been so disappointed by a book.
Lee Fiora is a middle-class Midwestern girl who has, through luck and determination, gotten herself a scholarship at Ault School, an exclusive private East Coast boarding school. The book follows her through her four years of high school and through the course of her hopeless crush on a classmate.
I picked this one up on a recommendation I ran across on a blog. It's not the kind of book I usually go for, and, in fact, both the rec and the cover lead me to expect something rather different -- dark comedy, perhaps. Satire. A complicated and interesting web of interpersonal relationships, which I love and which seems particularly suited for a boarding school story. And I did like the first chapter.
The reason I liked the first chapter, and wanted to like the rest, was that she nailed certain feelings I have had. The one that really stands out, because I haven't seen it depicted all that often, is the feeling of wanting to be alone but not wanting it to be conspicuous that you're alone -- the subtle dance of getting to the dining hall late so that no one notices that you're eating alone, of wanting to walk, invisible and wraithlike, from one class to another without attracting even the glances of other people. It's how I was, and in many ways still am: I like the pressure of not having anyone paying attention to me, but I don't want people to know that I'm alone because then I'll have the pressure of their misguided pity or, sometimes, well-meaning but clumsy attempts to include me when I don't much want to be included. At first I thought we might have a story about that rare creature: a happy introvert, someone who, like me, enjoys asociality and quiet.
Cut for length, not for spoilers; spoilers are tagged to black-on-black, highlight to read.)
( You can hear the 'but' coming already, right? Also: racism and sexism, oh my! )
But the race-and-sexism protests serve to make the book actually sound more interesting than it is. Which isn't to say it's unqualified awful: it has moments of genuine insight, little bits that were actually funny, and the writing is not at all bad, very fluid and readable. The main problem is that it's dull, and the main character is unlikeable. I got caught up because I thought I could empathize with her -- but I couldn't; she wasn't shy like me, she was shy like me but had nothing going on under the surface, either. And it's hard for me to empathize with anyone who has no interests, drives, hobbies, or, in fact, any desires at all except for a particular boy. And that's really, really, really not what I look for when I look to read a book about a woman, young or old.
Lee Fiora is a middle-class Midwestern girl who has, through luck and determination, gotten herself a scholarship at Ault School, an exclusive private East Coast boarding school. The book follows her through her four years of high school and through the course of her hopeless crush on a classmate.
I picked this one up on a recommendation I ran across on a blog. It's not the kind of book I usually go for, and, in fact, both the rec and the cover lead me to expect something rather different -- dark comedy, perhaps. Satire. A complicated and interesting web of interpersonal relationships, which I love and which seems particularly suited for a boarding school story. And I did like the first chapter.
The reason I liked the first chapter, and wanted to like the rest, was that she nailed certain feelings I have had. The one that really stands out, because I haven't seen it depicted all that often, is the feeling of wanting to be alone but not wanting it to be conspicuous that you're alone -- the subtle dance of getting to the dining hall late so that no one notices that you're eating alone, of wanting to walk, invisible and wraithlike, from one class to another without attracting even the glances of other people. It's how I was, and in many ways still am: I like the pressure of not having anyone paying attention to me, but I don't want people to know that I'm alone because then I'll have the pressure of their misguided pity or, sometimes, well-meaning but clumsy attempts to include me when I don't much want to be included. At first I thought we might have a story about that rare creature: a happy introvert, someone who, like me, enjoys asociality and quiet.
Cut for length, not for spoilers; spoilers are tagged to black-on-black, highlight to read.)
( You can hear the 'but' coming already, right? Also: racism and sexism, oh my! )
But the race-and-sexism protests serve to make the book actually sound more interesting than it is. Which isn't to say it's unqualified awful: it has moments of genuine insight, little bits that were actually funny, and the writing is not at all bad, very fluid and readable. The main problem is that it's dull, and the main character is unlikeable. I got caught up because I thought I could empathize with her -- but I couldn't; she wasn't shy like me, she was shy like me but had nothing going on under the surface, either. And it's hard for me to empathize with anyone who has no interests, drives, hobbies, or, in fact, any desires at all except for a particular boy. And that's really, really, really not what I look for when I look to read a book about a woman, young or old.
