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Content snapshot
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Violence
None
No violence
Language
Some
Some strong language in the contemporary literary fiction register
Sexual Content
Some
Adult sexual content including a degrading relationship; handled with unflinching honesty
Substance Use
Barely any
Some teenage drinking and drug use as part of the boarding school culture
Emotional Intensity
A lot
The social anxiety and the psychological cost of obsessing over belonging and status are the novel's most powerful elements
What this book is about
Curtis Sittenfeld's debut novel follows Lee Fiora, a scholarship girl from Indiana who attends an elite Massachusetts boarding school and spends four years watching the wealthy and confident students she will never fully belong to. The novel is a devastating portrait of social anxiety and class, with Lee making increasingly self-destructive choices in her hunger to belong. The sexual content — including a degrading casual relationship with a popular boy — is explicitly adult. One of the best American debut novels of the 2000s.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Degrading sexual relationship depicted
Class anxiety and social cruelty
Reader Verification
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More Contemporary Fiction books from the catalog.
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