Prep

A Novel

By: Curtis Sittenfeld

Narrated by: Jorjeana Marie

Length: 17 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

An insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story, as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant 14-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of - and, ultimately, a participant in - their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee’s experiences - complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant - coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.

©2005 Curtis Sittenfeld (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“Curtis Sittenfeld is a young writer with a crazy amount of talent. Her sharp and economical prose reminds us of Joan Didion and Tobias Wolff. Like them, she has a sly and potent wit, which cuts unexpectedly - but often - through the placid surface of her prose. Her voice is strong and clear, her moral compass steady; I’d believe anything she told me.” (Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)

“Speaking in a voice as authentic as Salinger’s Holden Caulfield and McCullers’ Mick Kelly, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Lee Fiora tells unsugared truths about adolescence, alienation, and the sociology of privilege. Prep’s every sentence rings true. Sittenfeld is a rising star.” (Wally Lamb, author of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True)

“In her deeply involving first novel, Curtis Sittenfeld invites us inside the fearsome echo chamber of adolescent self-consciousness. But Prep is more than a coming of age story - it’s a study of social class in America, and Sittenfeld renders it with astonishing deftness and clarity.” (Jennifer Egan, author of Look at Me)

I did not want to miss a word!

This story of a teen aged girl from a middle class midwestern family who attends an eastern boarding school for her high school years has so many “book group discussion” topics. These include class, ethnicity, sex that means one thing for our heroine and another for the boy, a 4 year long crush, issues with parents, teachers, friends and the rigorous academics at a prestigious prep school. It is also a good example of what we hope our teenagers will one day understand that so much teenage angst will dissipate in college and beyond. The reader lives through all of this with Lee and, I believe, hopes that all will turn out well for this kind and introspective young woman, so sensitively narrated on Audible. I was sorry when the story ended.

The good aspects shine

The person reading the story made the character come alive. The plot was lacking. However, it is filled with details that describe the boarding school experience well. I appreciate that the characters are morally ambiguous.

A poignant

A poignant POV of teen angst that feels so isolating. This book evokes familiar feelings of being out of place when you know you should feel so lucky and happy. Narration was overall a joy to listen to. Though the book was long, I felt comfortable with the episodic storytelling structure. The protagonist was at some points unlikeable but isn’t that what we all feel about our young selves?

Oldie but goodie

I learned about this book from a “if you liked this try that” article and was half way through before I realized it was something of a cult classic. The story perhaps dragged a bit in the middle chapters but really captures how so many of us felt in high school, years that we’re told are supposed to be the best of our lives. The thing I really loved about the story is the author never gives in to the cliche or expected - whenever you think you know what’s going to happen, the author takes a left turn, but not in a way that feels forced or contrived, but rather in a way that feels like what would happen in real life. The narrator was also really well chosen for the inner dialogue of a teen girl.

Definitely a favorite!

This Audiobook has become my go-to listen while I'm falling asleep. The story & narration are superb.

Great story not as great production

This was a very engaging book, however the production was terrible. The first word of almost every sentence was cut off. It was hard to understand at times because sometimes that first word was important to the rest of the sentence. After about an hour of this I restarted the book in case it was something on my end. But the problem persisted and I just had to struggle through. This book took me longer than usual because I was so annoyed by the production that I didn’t stay as engaged as I probably would have been if that weren’t happening.

Underwhelmed

This is a long story that I felt obligated to finish. The chapters are extremely long, and prevented me from following my “5 chapter rule” to read the first five chapters before deciding if I enjoy the book. Once I finished the first chapter, I continued listening, but unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it.

If you like episodic stories

This is not a typical novel with a clear plot. It is an episodic novel similar to many TV show structures that follows the experience of a teenage girl in an 80s or 90s boarding school. That is fine-- one of my all- time favorite novels is like that (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)-- but this one was just not compelling enough to hold my interest, and I found the protagonist realistic enough but increasingly unlikable. I wouldn't mind this so much if she had developed and matured over time, but she didn't. This made her just annoying. There was nothing elevating at the end, and in a novel like this there should be something to give the story meaning and purpose. The author did an excellent job of probing the psyche of the protagonist, reminding me uncomfortably of myself at that age, but it was just too much without deep character change and development. For these reasons I listened to four chapters (after setting the pacing on 1.25), and then skipped to the last chapter.

Boring to fascinating

At first when I was listening to the spec I thought it was kind of boring and going nowhere. But as the story and narrative developed it got fascinating and ended up being a very interesting perspective on a prep school.

Interesting and fast read

The person who read this book for Audible had a weird pronunciation for several words that was grating to hear. Storyline was great….I will see out more titles from this writer.