Prep tells the high school
story of Lee Fiora from South Bend, Indiana who is on nearly full scholarship
at Ault School, a boarding school for rich children in Massachusetts.  Lee
arrives as a freshman and leaves as a senior.  She does not feel that she fits
in when she arrives, and although she makes friends, she remains an outsider
for her whole time there.  She goes through many of the usual problems
reputedly experienced by teen girls: negotiating friendships, nurturing crushes
on boys, crying or holding back tears when faced with problems, and worrying
what other people think of her.  Since she is at a boarding school, she does
not have to deal with her family much, and she seems distant from them even
when she goes home.  Lee seems unhappy most of the time, and although she chose
to go to Ault, her misery seems to stem from the school.  Her family does not
have much money, and she is surrounded by wealthy self-assured people who have
grown up familiar with unspoken rules that Lee does not understand.  She wants
to fit in, but she never does.

The subculture of prep school will
be unfamiliar to most readers, who if they are like me will have formed their
main impressions from movies like Rushmore and Cider House Rules
or novels like Tobias Wolff’s Old School.  The story has a timeless
quality, and although it seems to be set in the late 1980s or early 1990s, no
one has email or cell phones.  Sittenfeld seems to be very familiar with this
world, and she uses the character of Lee to depict it in a rather unflattering
light.  The students are talented and will go on to be leaders in their chosen
fields.  They do not consciously see themselves as more privileged or important
than other people, but class plays a major role in the way that their
perceptions are formed.   The people are generally friendly and responsible,
but Lee finds it difficult to relate to them.  Her father is in the mattress
business and drives a Datsun, and she is embarrassed by him in front of her
peers. 

Yet Prep is a perplexing
novel because Lee is such an unappealing character.  As she narrates her story,
she always puts herself down and retreats from others.  She remains resolutely
ordinary, and excels at nothing except for cutting other people’s hair.  Even
as a senior, she does not play any part in clubs, sports, or other campus
activities.  She does not even go to any dances.  She seems to spend her time
sitting in her room reading Cosmopolitan.  It is hard to understand why
she wanted to go to Ault in the first place, because she has no interest in
taking advantage of what the school has to offer.  Readers may identify with
her, but doing so, they will start to feel worse about themselves.  Lee is a perceptive
observer of life around her in some ways, but she is extremely naïve in many
others.  Other people look down on her or just fail to notice her at all, and
Lee does nothing to merit further attention.  Her best qualities are that she
is thoughtful and behaves with some authenticity, and she rejects the facades
and stupid priorities of the more superficial people around her.  However, she
does not stand up for what she believes in, and she rarely voices her own
opinion. Most of the time she stays quiet and bland.  She is not an interesting
person. 

It is quite an achievement to base
a whole novel around such an uninspiring character, especially since it is 370
pages long, with the unabridged audiobook taking Julie Dretzin 18 hours to
read.  The plot moves quite fast, and holds the reader’s interest.  However, on
finishing the book, one is not so likely to be pleased to have invested time on
it.  While the story does reach a climax with Lee’s final week as a senior, it
is not a very satisfying finish.  One ends up not really caring about any of
the characters, and although Lee tells the readers what some of them are doing
ten years after leaving Ault, one is not curious about them.  So while Sittenfeld
has won high praise in her blurbs on the back cover of her first novel, Prep
is a little disappointing.  

© 2006 Christian Perring. All
rights reserved.