The first book I read by Sittenfeld was Rodham, which I absolutely loved. I loved how Sittenfeld could make HRC such a complex woman, someone who makes mistakes but then owns up to them and tries to make them right. Then I was a bit between library books, and Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride & Prejudice was immediately available. That one was so disappointing; Liz spends most of the novel patting herself on the back for being a much better person than her mother. And 181 chapters was just too much.

One of my oldest friends really encouraged me to read this book, so I figured I’d pick it up. I went to college at William & Mary, but one of the guys I dated had gone to boarding school here in New England — and he remains the only person I’ve ever known to attend boarding school. I do know someone that used to teach at the boarding school here in town, but we never really discussed it. So the concept of boarding school is a bit foreign to me.

I could identify a little bit with Lee. Even now, I’m somewhat ashamed to admit, I will sometimes feel I’m the pity add to a party or a gathering, and I’m constantly reassuring myself that if someone invited me somewhere, they literally want me there. But I feel like Lee never gets to that point. She’s constantly denigrating herself, and self-deprecation gets really old quickly.

She is also really, really shallow. Her roommate Martha is constantly trying to help her be a better person, but Lee would rather just wallow in her shallowness. The comments about people’s weight were really annoying; at one point, Lee says she’s gotten fatter, having gained a mere 10 pounds over the last two years. Later in the book, after her former roommate Sin-Jun swallowed a lot of pills, Sin-Jun’s roommate is melting down in her hospital room, and Lee wonders how Clara could possibly have the energy to sustain her reaction, considering that she’s overweight. Like, really. I’m quite overweight, and while I can’t run a marathon, it takes quite a bit before I’m winded.

This is supposed to be a coming of age novel, but I’m left wondering exactly why, considering that Lee is the same person in 9th grade as she is as a senior four years later. She doesn’t grow or change or learn. She just exists. She also finds no niche at all; she’d rather glom on to Martha and expect her to be everything to her. I realize boarding school isn’t the same at college, but I found the sci-fi club at W&M, giving me something to do every Monday night plus random weekend nights, and a set of friends I still talk to twenty years after I’ve graduated. Lee just sits in her room. She says no so often to invitations to do things that they quickly dry up. Then she’s annoyed that no one invites her to do anything.

The book drags on and on and on. We’re treated to descriptions and discussions of other students that have at best a tenuous connection to Lee and do nothing to further the story, making their inclusion just a way to up the page numbers. And the names are just too much. Cross Sugarman? Alspeth? Darden? Horton (who is a girl)? Do rich people really give their kids names like that?

I feel a little badly that I didn’t like this book at all, considering how much my friend loved it, but I’m starting to think maybe Sittenfeld isn’t for me. I stand by my enjoyment of Rodham, but I feel I should leave her other books on the shelf.

This book makes me want to shout at its critics, "you don't have to identify with the protagonist to like the book!--identification isn't the only reason to read!". But then I want to defend it precisely because it seems so "real." I.e., I identify with it.

Now I say "defend" because the book is marketed as chick-lit (I don't care how much reputable praise you list on the back cover; when there's a pink and green belt cinching your book, you're chick-lit), and I was embarrassed to brandish it on the El. But brandish it I did, because it's an intense, elaborately insightful, and imaginatively structured novel. Which is why I think identification might be beside the point--if you like Lee, if you don't like Lee; if you recognize your school in hers or you don't--it's still a visceral and whole picture of something, and it feels whole because it isn't a neat linear trajectory from insecure to secure, insular to worldly, and no-boyfriend to perfect-boyfriend. It's whole because it may not feel like your life, but it feels like someone's, and that someone is intermittently hilarious and almost always incisive. (And here's where I get all hypocritical, I know. I'm basing my praise on the very thing I'm saying shouldn't matter. I identify with the narrator's descriptions of certain relationships or social moments, so I call her "incisive." Hoist away...) For the record, though, I recommend spreading it out across several sittings rather than reading it in one big lump--otherwise you can a) become inure to the emotional swings and b) you might miss a would-be favorite line.