From The Guardian:
Curtis Sittenfeld evokes the horror of being a teenager in her examination of the cruelty of cool, Prep, says Viv Groskop. Lee Fiora is a dorky 14-year-old from an embarrassingly ordinary family in South Bend, Indiana, who ends up at Ault, an exclusive Massachusetts boarding school. Prep is the story of her survival there. It is about how she learns to fit in somewhere she doesn’t belong, only to suffer social death the moment she finally feels accepted. Rejected by 14 publishers before it found a home, Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut is an addictive portrait of adolescence – The OC meets Donna Tartt’s The Secret History with flashes of Clueless. After rave reviews and becoming a New York Times bestseller, it has also been optioned as a film by Paramount.
More here.