I am not a huge fan of this particular genre, largely because adolescence was awkward and horrible enough to experience the first time around, and I can't imagine why anyone would be particularly interested in reliving it. The protagonists of these books are invariably ungainly teenagers stumbling around and inevitably ending up in horrifically embarrassing situations, usually involving members of the opposite sex, which somehow conclude in a warm fuzzy ending in which everything is made better and the protagonists manage to escape from the teenage years relatively unscathed.
But I read Prep by Curtis Sittenfield, even though the title alone would normally have been enough to dissuade me, because Mackenzie suggested it and she is rarely (if ever) mistaken in her book recommendations. It was a relatively quick read even though it's a pretty big book - I finished it in a couple hours on the airplane to Amsterdam. It was also excellent, in that it was quirky and funny and heartfelt and sweet in a genre-defying, unsentimental way. The book follows the main character Lee throughout her years at an exclusive and academically rigorous East Coast boarding school. I hate summarizing books, so I won't, but I will say that it was a great book and I have already gone out and bought her second (unfortunately titled The Man of My Dreams - I can't take it out of the house because I'm ashamed of what people will think of me). What I liked best about it, though, is that there wasn't really a warm fuzzy ending. She doesn't end up doing well at her new school. She never really fits in or makes many friends. Her one relationship there really fucks with her head and made me feel sad and sick on her behalf as I read about it. She drifts away from her family and ends up really hurting them. And so on and so on. I'm making it sound as though it's this really tragic story but it's not. She ends up okay, but changed in ways that are not always for the better, which is I think how adolescence affects us all.
Anyway, it was great, so read it.
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I completely agree. I don't particularly care for coming of age fiction either, mostly because teenagers annoy the crap out of me. They are just so dumb it seems. And I just cannot relate to most teenagers it seems because we are not interested in the same things. And I hate how things always work out in the end, especially with teenagers. Life is really not that awesome.
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