"Prep"

Reading this book was something of a chore. I just wanted to smack the protagonist around a bit in places. On the other hand, it also sent me into dark, chilled place because the boarding school had a lot of similar features to Germantown Friends School, where I spent Junior High. The whole thing with money and how you don't talk about it, the conformity, the structure of the cliques. It was creepy.

It also put into relief, for me, the difference between East Coast private schools and anything more than 100 miles west of the Atlantic. Here, in the West Coast, the moneyed sort want their kids to participate in sports and music and art. On the East Coast, you suck it in and act like everyone's equal while you prepare to take over duddy's investment firm. On the West Coast, you learn to perform perform perform for everybody's benefit!!! The East Coast has layers and protocols. The West Coast just has a certain unbridled enthusiasm — all over the place, for the performers and the watchers alike. You! Must! Love! Everything! You! See!

I'm not sure which is ultimately more annoying, but I know which coast's style screwed me up psychologically.