Prep is Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, published back in 2005. Prep is an agonizingly authentic portrait of a teenage white girl’s high school experience. Its authenticity is so remarkable that I had a hard time getting through this book because of my own painful memories of high school, but it is such a well written novel that I am glad I read it.

The protagonist of Prep is Lee Fiora of South Bend, Indiana, who is fourteen years old when she begins attending a prestigious boarding school outside of Boston called Ault. It is Lee’s idea to attend boarding school even though her parents are not keen on the idea. She has a vision of what her boarding school experience will be like based on Ault’s brochures, but soon realizes the reality of her situation is far different from her expectation.

Lee is an intelligent girl but turns out to be a mediocre student with middling grades. She is extremely self conscious, which makes it difficult for her to become friends with the other students, who are mostly white like her, but from rich families while she is a scholarship kid. She has a tendency of saying incredibly awkward things. She develops an excruciating, unrequited crush on one of the boys in her grade, a crush that consumes her time spent at Ault (and certainly does not help with her grades). Her experience with wealth and privilege makes her ashamed of her family and she begins lashing out at her family in anger.

I got so much second-hand embarrassment from reading this novel, that there were times I had to put it down and take a few deep breaths before continuing, which I am sure is making you wonder why you would even want to read it. The beauty of Prep is that Lee is narrating her high school experience from the future when she is nearly thirty and understands the world better and has become a more empathetic person. Lee can look back at high school and admit her own ignorance about the social, economic, gender and race politics of Ault. Prep reminds us that as difficult as it is for some of us to reflect on our high school years, it is important to not let who we were then to affect who we are now. High school is just a few short years of our lives; it is not meant to define us.