Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld was on my reading list since I read a review of it in Time Out. I knew it would be about a prep school, but not much else. I'd heard from several reviews that the writing was witty and smart. I figured, I like witty and smart, so I may as well read it. The cover has a girl's belt on it--two-toned--green and pink--preppy--not the way I was in high school.
When I found it on the shelf in the library, I read the inside cover blurb. This was recently, months after I'd added it to my reading list, so I remembered the witty part, but not the part about it being about school. I read that the main character was a 14 year old girl and I put it back on the shelf. Whenever I read stuff like that, it makes me unsure, uneasy, and unhappy. I trudge along a book like that squirming and regretting, wishing I were someone different back then. Wishing I didn't miss out on so much in school. Regretting and hating my high school years; this includes junior high and even sixth grade. Thinking back to high school is not a fun experience. I was fugly. I was obnoxious. I had low-self-esteem and a bad attitude because of it. I had good friends, though, which made me not go off the deep end.
I borrowed Prep from the library, bracing myself against the agony to come as I read. I started it that day. I was a hundred pages in the next time I looked up. I couldn't close the cover. I had to keep going. The story did not make me stumble back to feeling worthless. It wasn't self-conscious or sympathetic. It was truthful. The narrator tells the story looking back. It's not nostalgic; it's matter-of-fact with a hint of "I know better now but that's still what I did then." It's coming of age without an epiphany. No huge revelation, but the narrator does change later on in life, known only through the eloquent way she weaves the story.
Though divided by grade and semester, only certain aspects of each piece in time happen. The memory of directing such and such a play is the way I remember such and such a year in school--that's what happens in Prep. Like sophomore year was the year that she made a certain friend or had a certain crush. Even when she got to the parts that involved the ever-present awkwardness with boys, I found myself rooting for the characters to be themselves rather than have a fairy-tale to tell. I didn't find myself jealous of fictional characters as I sometimes do. Then in later sections, the narrator refers back to years before, or explains a back story that didn't happen in the section about a year before; that makes it all that much real. The story is the way someone would tell you her own high school experience over a dinner and dessert and maybe a drink or two afterwards.
The last section was long and I found myself not liking it as much. But suddenly, like the rest of the book, it picked up. In the final pages, there was a rush to graduation and a flashforward into how everyone ended up. You know that the boy she has a crush on and she do not get married--you know that right up front--and I wasn't upset about it. Then I was. Then I wasn't because if they had gotten married, the book would have made no sense and would've sucked and I would've hated it for that. I was actually sad when I finished it. For the past four days, I found myself rushing to get things done so I could read more. I took it with me everywhere because I was so involved in the lives of prep school kids. Four hundred pages in three and a half days. I couldn't believe it.
What was more unbelieveable to me was that I still didn't feel those pangs of the past coming back to haunt me. Even now, I sometimes feel like I did in high school about never being that girl. Like today, I'm going to get lasered again. I prepare to get lasered the same way I prepare for a date. I put on makeup. To get lasered. I make sure I wear cool clothes that fit in all good places. I don't want to be the weird girl they talk about when I leave the office. I don't want to be the girl the technician talks about later on to the other girls, wondering why I'm getting lasered in the first place because that's the least that's wrong with me.
That's all the struggle of my formative years coming round every now and then. However, that's fleeting. I'm not the person I was back then. I'm happy I'm not. Still, I realize, and that realization is reinforced after reading Prep, that I would not be the person I am today if I had been "that girl" that I couldn't be. I had to be awkward and strange back then to be awkward and strange now. Only now, it's sexy. I know how to work those traits. Back then, awkward and strange was awkward and strange. Today it's what sets me apart from everyone else, and I'm okay with that.
When I found it on the shelf in the library, I read the inside cover blurb. This was recently, months after I'd added it to my reading list, so I remembered the witty part, but not the part about it being about school. I read that the main character was a 14 year old girl and I put it back on the shelf. Whenever I read stuff like that, it makes me unsure, uneasy, and unhappy. I trudge along a book like that squirming and regretting, wishing I were someone different back then. Wishing I didn't miss out on so much in school. Regretting and hating my high school years; this includes junior high and even sixth grade. Thinking back to high school is not a fun experience. I was fugly. I was obnoxious. I had low-self-esteem and a bad attitude because of it. I had good friends, though, which made me not go off the deep end.
I borrowed Prep from the library, bracing myself against the agony to come as I read. I started it that day. I was a hundred pages in the next time I looked up. I couldn't close the cover. I had to keep going. The story did not make me stumble back to feeling worthless. It wasn't self-conscious or sympathetic. It was truthful. The narrator tells the story looking back. It's not nostalgic; it's matter-of-fact with a hint of "I know better now but that's still what I did then." It's coming of age without an epiphany. No huge revelation, but the narrator does change later on in life, known only through the eloquent way she weaves the story.
Though divided by grade and semester, only certain aspects of each piece in time happen. The memory of directing such and such a play is the way I remember such and such a year in school--that's what happens in Prep. Like sophomore year was the year that she made a certain friend or had a certain crush. Even when she got to the parts that involved the ever-present awkwardness with boys, I found myself rooting for the characters to be themselves rather than have a fairy-tale to tell. I didn't find myself jealous of fictional characters as I sometimes do. Then in later sections, the narrator refers back to years before, or explains a back story that didn't happen in the section about a year before; that makes it all that much real. The story is the way someone would tell you her own high school experience over a dinner and dessert and maybe a drink or two afterwards.
The last section was long and I found myself not liking it as much. But suddenly, like the rest of the book, it picked up. In the final pages, there was a rush to graduation and a flashforward into how everyone ended up. You know that the boy she has a crush on and she do not get married--you know that right up front--and I wasn't upset about it. Then I was. Then I wasn't because if they had gotten married, the book would have made no sense and would've sucked and I would've hated it for that. I was actually sad when I finished it. For the past four days, I found myself rushing to get things done so I could read more. I took it with me everywhere because I was so involved in the lives of prep school kids. Four hundred pages in three and a half days. I couldn't believe it.
What was more unbelieveable to me was that I still didn't feel those pangs of the past coming back to haunt me. Even now, I sometimes feel like I did in high school about never being that girl. Like today, I'm going to get lasered again. I prepare to get lasered the same way I prepare for a date. I put on makeup. To get lasered. I make sure I wear cool clothes that fit in all good places. I don't want to be the weird girl they talk about when I leave the office. I don't want to be the girl the technician talks about later on to the other girls, wondering why I'm getting lasered in the first place because that's the least that's wrong with me.
That's all the struggle of my formative years coming round every now and then. However, that's fleeting. I'm not the person I was back then. I'm happy I'm not. Still, I realize, and that realization is reinforced after reading Prep, that I would not be the person I am today if I had been "that girl" that I couldn't be. I had to be awkward and strange back then to be awkward and strange now. Only now, it's sexy. I know how to work those traits. Back then, awkward and strange was awkward and strange. Today it's what sets me apart from everyone else, and I'm okay with that.
Posts
0 tidbits:
Post a Comment