and Sittenfeld renders it with astonishing deftness and clarity. 'PREP is more than a coming of age story - it's a study of social class. But as she soon learns, Ault is a minefield of unstated rules and incomprehensible social rituals, and Lee must work hard to find - and maintain - her place in the pecking order. Her head is filled with images from the school brochure of handsome boys in sweaters leaning against old brick buildings, girls running with lacrosse sticks across pristine athletics fields, everyone singing hymns in chapel. Lee Fiora is a shy fourteen-year-old when she leaves small-town Indiana for a scholarship at Ault, an exclusive boarding school in Massachusetts. 'Sittenfeld shares with Salinger a knack of capturing, in effortless prose, a teenager mindset' THE TIMES

'PREP might just be my favourite book' PANDORA SYKES 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.'Sittenfeld writes girls and women as they truly are, with shades of light and dark, with and without grace, apologetic as well as fearless' GUARDIAN Sittenfelds first novel, Prep, which took her three years to write, was published in 2005 and concerns a girl, Lee Fiora, from South Bend, Indiana.

But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault.

As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. 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.Īs Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts.

Prep book curtis sittenfeld