Prep
Subtitle: a novel
By: Curtis Sittenfeld
Edition: 2005 Random House Trade Paperback ed.
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 420
ISBN-13: 9780812972351
Subjects: Self-destructive behavior; Teenage girls; Preparatory school students; Fiction
Description: In the late 1980s, for reasons even she has difficulty pinpointing, fourteen-year-old Lee Fiora leaves her middle-class, close-knit, ribald family in Indiana and enrolls at Ault, an elite co-ed boarding school in Massachusetts. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of, and ultimately a participant in, their rituals and mores, although, as a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider. By the time she's a senior, Lee has found her place at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her hard-won identity within the community is shattered. Lee's experiences, complicated relationships with teachers, intense and sometimes rancorous friendships with other girls, an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush, are both a psychologically astute portrait of one girl's coming-of-age and an embodiment of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.
Notes: Includes a Reader's guide and Reading group questions and topics for discussion.
Table of contents: title: Thieves; title: All school rules are in effect; title: Assassin; title: Cipher; title: Parents' weekend; title: Townie; title: Spring-cleaning; title: Kissing and kissing.