The story begins with young Lee Fiora beginning her freshman year at Ault, an exclusive boarding school somewhere near Boston. While popular and outgoing at her middle school in Indiana, her provincial lower middle class upbringing causes her to shy away from engaging with her new upper middle class schoolmates. Will she ever fit in? Will she become popular?
There are some mild spoilers in this review, so don’t bother reading further if not knowing what happens is important to you.
It’s a coming-og-age novel, obviously, and it’s rather well-written. I have to say though, that I took an extreme dislike to our young heroine. I know what it’s like to be shy. I know what it’s like to feel awkward at all times, and hence to never fit in with one’s peers. Perhaps my own history has rendered me less tolerant of others in similar situations. But I think there’s a qualitative difference.
Lee’s shyness wasn’t what made me dislike her I think. Because the reader sees her thought processes, I saw her not only refrain from interaction with her schoolmates, but from actively participating in her own life. The last decision she makes in the novel (and it actually occurs prior to the novel’s start) is to attend Ault. Her parents express reluctance, but her insistence and pursuit of a scholarship convinces them. The next time she makes any sort of decision is near the end when she opens up to a reporter who is doing a human interest story on life in prep boarding schools. Between these two events, she makes no choices whatsoever. She’s not only ruled by her fears, she’s added in some assumptions as well. Not only does she avoid taking risks with fellow people, she avoids participating in classes. She participates in sports only because they are mandatory. She makes no effort whatsoever. She’s just there.
When I was shy, I found many things enjoyable, despite my shyness. I loved computers and programming. I loved reading. I loved billiards. I wasn’t doing great things, even within the limited spheres in which I participated. But I actively pursued my happiness, even if it wasn’t complete. Some people don’t mind being shy. I did. I didn’t do anything about it until my early 30s. I avoided it for a long time. But I participated in something.
There’s some very telling passages in the middle of the book where Lee’s lack of participation or even of any opinions is pointed out to her. It sticks in her mind enough that she writes
about it in retrospect, but even with that hindsight, she it’s like a mere acknowledgment that the exchange occurred. There’s no light bulb going off that her issues go beyond her shyness. Not that I could tell.
Instead, Sittenfeld’s character Lee blames everything primarily on her differences with her upper class brethren. And yet, until late in the book, the other teen characters exhibit little that marks them to me as anything but typical adolescents. Lee simply assumes she can’t participate without risking derision, so she does nothing.
I saw the book less as an indictment of boarding school classism, than as an indictment of the mindset of people who don’t participate. Lee has some realization at the end that she may have had a part to play in her own misery, I just wish it was emphasized more than it was.
Liked the book. Didn’t like the character.
Title: Prep
Author: Curtis Sittenfeld (Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld)
Imprint / publisher: Random House
Format: Hardcover
Publication date: 2005
Length: 403 p.
ISBN-10: 1-4000-6231-4
Subject: Teenage girls — Fiction
Subject: Preparatory school students — Fiction
Subject: Self-destructive behavior — Fiction
Subject: Massachusetts — Fiction
Subject: Indiana — Fiction
LC classificaiton: PS3619.I94P74 2005
i agree completely.