Prep

Catty alert: reading Curtis Sittenfeld's fictionalized boarding school expose (damn html: how do I make accents?) has kindled in me my inner teenage queen bee bitch. Sure, I can identify with her alter ego, the awkward scholarship recipient Lee Fiora, but it's really more fun to be one of the members of the "in" crowd.

But really Curtis, just because you have an unusual name for a female, and just because the rich do occasionally have some crazy names (Apple? Paris and her former fiance Paris? Blanket?!?) doesn't mean that all rich people have crazy names. I'm only through Lee's freshman year, and have already met Aspeth, Little, Gates (female), and Cross. Really?!

On a serious note, I think Sittenfeld has interesting things to say about the high school experience and particularly about class matters. And as another Stanford alum, I think we both saw how wealth bubbled under the surface. She has a great line about how

"there were different kinds of rich... There was normal rich, dignified rich, which you didn't talk about, and then there was extreme, comical, unsubtle rich - like having your dorm room professionally decorated, or riding a limousine into Boston to meet your mother - and that was permissible to discuss."

It was like an observation that I always knew but had never quite gotten around to making. This, rather than the satirical commentaries on boarding school life, are what have made this book strong thus far. I hope that as the novel continues I get more of the good stuff and less of the ridiculous...

(Also, regarding heroines named Lee: I have a hard time disassociating this Lee with Maggie Gyllenhaal's wonderful Lee in Secretary. I loved the movie - the short story it was based on proved to be a big disappointment.)