Prep

By Curtis Sittenfeld

Lee wants a different life. A middle class kid from Indiana, Lee wants to be more. She is pretty smart so she is able to earn a scholarship to an East Coast prep school. The scholarship won't cover all her expenses but her parents are willing to pay for what the scholarship doesn't. So at age 14, Lee goes off to boarding school.
It doesn't take her long to figure out that most of the students at the school come from money. And that kids like Lee who don't come from affluent backgrounds are the exception.
Teen years are years when most kids want desperately to fit in. But now Lee, who formerly was a popular, outgoing person, finds herself an outsider. She just doesn't feel comfortable around these rich, seemingly self-confident upper class teens. She becomes silent, withdrawn, and angry.
Yet, oddly, she chooses to stay. Year after year, never feeling quite at home, always conscious of the gap between herself and the others, she stays on. She makes a few close friends but never dates, never attends dances, never lets on to her fellow students just how lonely and sad she really is. She is always on the fringes, a hanger-on, closely observing but keeping her distance. She is never really accepted as one of the gang, probably because she is never able to relax and just be herself. She is always on guard, always trying to protect herself from imagined rejection.

This was an OK book. The first half was better than the last because the novel seemed to stall and not really go anywhere towards the middle of the book. It doesn't pick up again until Lee becomes involved with a boy she has been yearning for since first attending that school. Also, I didn't really like Lee, I found her to be very off-putting. But other than that, the book is a close look at life at a boarding school for children of the wealthy, a glimpse of the lives of the privileged few.