A review by kylegarvey
Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 

Curious anthropology, self-consciousness so screamingly immature it must come from a high-school-age teen, painful but interesting. You'll relate. "Things like weather or certain songs could make me forget it sometimes, but I was always still myself" (404). Novelistically fluid but feeling like a bunch of discrete sketches -- of incident, feeling, character, whatnot -- were roped together, taught to blend. I think I can tell because that's how I write everything. Prep really doesn't achieve the Mount Everest it sets for itself, but I think it's close enough, for respectful golf clap at least (lol). 

 

Like Fosse's memoir-ish pain/ecstasy film All That Jazz it almost is, except that film had significant show-opening life-closing triumph for an end and Sittenfeld's book really doesn't. Well, other than dad almost disowning her, dumbly almost-witnessing her friend's almost-suicide, or accidentally providing the scandalous meat to an exposé article about her boarding school (on the terrible eve of her graduating it), among other life gashes. Or Knoll's novel Luckiest Girl Alive. Or the film Vox Lux? "Once they’ve decided to occur, will the bad coincidences of your life seek you out, their shape changing, their consequences staying the same?" (61) -- but thankfully, rarely as heavy! 

 

Heavenly occurrences sometimes, anyway. "I knew they would not belong. I think it often comes down to nothing but contrast—the way that it’s only when you’re sick that you wonder why, during the months and months of being up and about, you never appreciated your health" (284). Almost, but crucially not, a sociopath. "From now on, I thought, I would pass over surfaces without leaving a mark, without entangling myself. After I’d been in a place, there’d be no evidence" (386). Sittenfeld's Prep prepared me in a way, but for what I just don't know (you'd think I'd have known to "craft" that sentence first-thing immediately, but that's honestly the last sentence I wrote for this review.)