Lee Fiora is fourteen years old, and the brightest girl in her school. All her academic life, her teachers have praised her cleverness and encouraged her to aim high; little wonder, then, that Lee starts to dream of exclusive boarding schools and the kind of students she might mingle with there. She goes so far as to start applying to various schools, and it is only when offered a scholarship to Ault, a very exclusive and expensive school in Massachusetts, that the situation becomes real to her. Her parents, sad to see her go, are nevertheless extremely proud of her, and Lee sets off for her new life amongst the privileged elite of Ault.
New Pecking Order at Ault
The move requires more adjustment than Lee could ever have believed. She survives the humiliation of her father dropping her off in the ancient family car, but soon discovers that friends are hard to come by and that she is no longer the cleverest pupil in school; indeed, it soon becomes clear that academically, she is distinctly average. She is not particularly pretty, not gifted in sports, not naturally outgoing or rebellious; Lee finds it hard to imagine that she will ever fit into the new world she has attempted to join.
Bit by bit, however, Lee starts to carve out her own path. Prep takes its structure from the academic year, and the Lee from the final section - Senior Year - is very different from the shy fourteen-year-old of Freshman Fall. Friends have come and gone, teachers have either inspired or frustrated, and the boy she has liked since the very beginning has finally taken notice of her; in other words, through Lee, the reader experiences all the typical highs and lows of a teenager's school years.
Lee Fiora and Alice Blackwell
In a first person narrative such as Prep, that relies so heavily on the link between the protagonist and the reader, it is a brave move to create a character like Lee, who is not always entirely likeable. Sittenfeld pulls it off however, and Lee is never less than entirely believable - a normal, flawed teen who doesn't always have the balanced perspective on the world that age and experience brings; indeed, her adult voice sometimes breaks into the narrative to pass a disparaging comment on the behaviour of her teenaged self.
Although the setting of Prep is entirely different, it is easy to see Lee Fiora as a forerunner of the Alice Blackwell character in American Wife, and it is refreshing to find a writer who can both sympathise with her protagonist as well as present them with all their faults clearly visible. Prep, Sittenfeld's first novel, may have drawn comparisons with J.D. Salinger and Sylvia Plath, but this young American writer continues to carve out a distinctive style of her own.
Elizabeth Gregory - Liz graduated from Manchester University with a BA (Hons) in English Language & Literature, and also holds an MA in Literature from the ...
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