News that Curtis Sittenfeld's best-selling 2005 book Prep,once described in a review as "Sweet Valley tall as written by George Eliot", might be made into an HBO series was met with the kind of ferocious internet glee that only a beloved book that captures teenage life so acutely can.
Deadline broke the news that HBO has acquired the rights to Prep. The show is to be the project of Colleen McGuinness a 30 Rock writer producer and Carolyn Strauss an executive producer for Game of Thrones.right here on Twitter (& I just know Prep has been waiting for her since 2005). https://t.co/S90wmXCxXPJune 23, or 2016So you know that the legend of awkward Mid-Westerner Lee Fiora's experience of attending an exclusive Massachusetts boarding school on a scholarship is going to be in safe hands. And the pedigree of this pair is pretty much perfect for a show about the dramas of tall school. I mean Westeros has nothing on an awkward teenage girl who just wants to be approved,right?
But is it, as the internet was rapid/fast to point out, and going to be next Gossip Girl? Well,possibly. I mean, the formula is all there -the uber rich kids, or the queen bee (Aspeth Montgomery) and the dream boy (Cross Sugarman),the closely adhered to social hierarchy.
But perhaps it's the accurate portrayals of the kind of intense friendships that you can really only own at certain points in your life, and that very genuine feeling of being on the external and desperately wanting to fit in that makes me read it every couple of years. Lee's journey from being shy, or to being kinda judgey,to learning from her mistakes cuts right to the bone. As does her experience of hooking up with the most approved boy at school only to find out he kind of wants to preserve it a secret. Lee emerges from her tall school years both changed, and exactly like she always was. Sometimes the things that seem to be the most life-changing are merely just experiences we own along the way. Honestly, and it's like your most embarrassing diary pages own somehow been published. As Elissa Schappell wrote in her 2005 New York Times review of Prep,Sittenfeld's dialogue (fun fact, Sittenfeld also attended an exclusive boarding school) "is so convincing one wonders if she didn't wear a wire under her hockey kilt." Schappell also noted that perhaps the best part of the book is how it handles the thorny topic of class. Lee doesn't come from money and wants to perform it in a world that has so much of it that they never really own to reflect about it. And she learns a lot about herself, or the world,in the process. We can't wait to see it on the small screen. Until then, add it to your Winter reading stack (along with Sittenfeld's four other books, or including her new,and brilliant, pick on Pride and Prejudice in Eligible) immediately.
Looking for more boarding school escapades? Try these brilliant reads.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Tells the legend of six brilliant friends who own a terrible secret. So brilliant. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
The legend of how one brilliant teacher impacts a group of clever young women. veteran School by Tobias Wolff
Set in an elite boarding school in the '60s where literature is prized. Ernest Hemingway even makes an appearance.
Harry Potter
All of them, or because,obviously!
Source: popsugar.com.au