Prep

Lee’s voice is multifaceted. She can be funny, sad, sarcastic, sincere, and oblivious. Find quotes that support Lee’s complex voice and explain how they reflect the specific quality.

Curtis Sittenfeld has written several other novels with women at the center. In The Man of My Dreams (2006), the follow-up to Prep, Hannah Gavener, like Lee, fixates on a man. In Rodham (2020), Sittenfeld’s fictionalized novel about the politician Hillary Rodham Clinton, Clinton searches for an identity and struggles with men. Read one of Sittenfeld’s other books and compare the story to Prep.

There are many other books about elite prep schools/boarding schools/high schools. Pick one—whether it’s Catcher in the Rye or the Gossip Girl books—and put it in dialogue with Prep. How do the books present the schools, the students, the teachers, and the parents?