Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animat...
Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.
As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.
Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.
The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world. (查看原文)
it's kind of like my life back to connecticut. i do miss some pieces from that catholic boarding school, but for the most part, i can't be more glad that i left that place forever, i am fucking free.
Self-conscious自卑人士的自白。十几年前我第一次读的时候还没经历过异国他乡私立学校的一切，却已经觉得这本书似道出了我loser的心声。特别emotionally dense的奇书，令我切肤地回忆起自己的挣扎、无力、肤浅、窝囊、被动和可笑。“I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like so...Self-conscious自卑人士的自白。十几年前我第一次读的时候还没经历过异国他乡私立学校的一切，却已经觉得这本书似道出了我loser的心声。特别emotionally dense的奇书，令我切肤地回忆起自己的挣扎、无力、肤浅、窝囊、被动和可笑。“I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.”(展开)
抱着非常低的期望，但成为很大的惊喜。低自尊、眼高手低、overly self-conscious的青春期女孩敏感心理刻画入木三分，配以一个如影随形无时无刻笼罩在主人公头顶的主题：如何面对优势文化？如何面对强势文化是每个人在一生中不同阶段总归要面临的问题，它大到是你的出身、阶层、语言、文化，小到你是如何发音你每句话末的尾音。Intersectionality决定每个人总有一种社会属性将她处于劣势地位...抱着非常低的期望，但成为很大的惊喜。低自尊、眼高手低、overly self-conscious的青春期女孩敏感心理刻画入木三分，配以一个如影随形无时无刻笼罩在主人公头顶的主题：如何面对优势文化？如何面对强势文化是每个人在一生中不同阶段总归要面临的问题，它大到是你的出身、阶层、语言、文化，小到你是如何发音你每句话末的尾音。Intersectionality决定每个人总有一种社会属性将她处于劣势地位，而我们大多数人能力却不足以允许自己和这些优势文化彻底分道扬镳，只能在心理层面寻求和解。高中四年里，主人公在这个问题上没有丝毫长进，but why is that so important to be liked?(展开)
from http://blog.sina.com.cn/woodlee 按《预科生》（Prep）的题材——美国中学生的成长故事——这部小说不太可能进入《纽约时报》２００５年十大好书名单，成为其中五本年度小说之一。美国人讲的“预科”，是指那些收费昂贵的私立寄宿学校，完全以学生进入名牌大学为目标，...
(展开)
actually i have not done the whole story however, i can wait to go through the end. and from the first sight, it seems a sad story for a girl about her first love and friendship. after second glance, things seems not so umacceptable and miserable. I mean we...
(展开)
Chapter 6: I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me. Chapter 2: The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call hi...
2020-08-23 18:10
Chapter 6:
I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.
Chapter 2:
The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.
Chapter 2
This phenomenon—being gripped by an overwhelming wave of feeling that was clearly not the feeling of the people around me—had also happened at a pep rally: It made me uncomfortable, because I didn’t want anyone to notice that I wasn’t jumping up and down or cheering, and it also thrilled me, because it made the world seem full of possibilities that could make my heart pound.
Chapter 6: Insecurity about oneself.别人爱的究竟是你这个人，还是你的身份、外表和条件呢？爱究竟有多少是博弈：
What I wanted to know about Dave was, had he noticed me before that time in the hospital, or had I piqued his interest during that conversation? But why would he have noticed me before, or why would I have piqued his interest then? Was I the best that he could do?
Chapter 4: 特别好的有局限的first person narrator，一方面主角和其他同学一样讲着种族歧视其实不存在，另一方面小说里时时处处都体现了有种族的划分，给书增加了一种复杂的况味。如果另一个同学是叙事者（比如那个黑人男生或者Little，将是非常不一样的故事）：
Racism didn’t exist at Ault. Or it did, of course it did, but not like that. Kids came from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, with parents who had emigrated from Pakistan, Thailand, Colombia, and some kids had families that still lived far away—in my dorm alone, there were girls from Zimbabwe and Latvia. And no one ever made slurs, it wasn’t like you got ostracized if you weren’t white. Racism seemed to me like a holdover from my parents’ generation, something that was not entirely gone but had fallen out of favor…
Chapter 2:
I knew at least that I’d lost the glow that surrounds you when the teachers think you’re one of the smart, responsible ones, that glow that shines brighter every time you raise your hand in class to say the perfect thing, or you run out of room in a blue book during an exam and have to ask for a second one.
Chapter 4: insecurity causes her to feel more, rather than less, judgmental towards others:
I felt mortified on her behalf. This was another misstep, talking about Ault the way a magazine article might, or the way someone in town—someone who worked at the grocery store, or the barber shop—would.
Chapter 6 “She feels lonely because Ault can be an alienating environment for people who do not come from wealthy families, but, in many cases, she worsens her own feelings of loneliness by underestimating others' capacities for emotion, assuming that her classmates are either happy or simply resigned to feeling mediocre.” But the truth is other people also have feelings and they are unique and busy with their own struggles.
The way she looked at me was so hopeless, so exhausted, that it seemed scornful. I had an inkling then that perhaps I’d underestimated her. Perhaps in the past I hadn’t given her credit for having opinions or experiencing discontent—for being like me.
Chapter 8:
(I used to fear, and I wasn’t completely wrong, that this was what the rest of the world was like. Hardly ever did it matter if you brushed your hair before driving to the grocery store, rarely did you work in an office where you cared what more than two or three people thought of you. At Ault, caring about everything was draining, but it was also exhilarating.)
Chapter 8: life is so vast and your world is so small and petty. Yet it’s still your world.
But these people, making their way through the morning, all their meetings and errands and obligations. And this was only here, in this station at this moment. The world was so big!I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that's almost unbearable.Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted.This possibility was not flattering to me; it was terrifying. There were other things a guy could think I was, and he wouldn't be entirely wrong - nice, or loyal, or maybe interesting. Not that I was always any of those thing, but in certain situations, it was conceivable. But to be seen as pretty was to be fundamentally misunderstood. First of all, I wasn't pretty, and on top of that I didn't take care of myself like a pretty girl did; I wasn't even one of the unpretty girls who passes as pretty through effort and association. If a guy believed my value to lie in my looks, it meant either that he'd somehow been mislead and would eventually be disappointed, or that he had very low standards.If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.... it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of something than the thing itself...and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was just so tiring to have to worry about whether your face was peeling, or to have to laugh at stories that weren’t funny.There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I’d think how girls’ coaches were never that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world to be were young and strong and fast. To play a great game of high school basketball-it was something I myself had never done, but I could tell-made you know what it was to be alive. How much in an adult life can compare to that? Granted, there are margaritas, or there’s no homework, but there are also puffy white bagels under neon lights in the conference room, there’s waiting for the plumber, making small talk with your boring neighbor.I actually liked the disolation of winter; it was the season when it was okay to be unhappy. If I were to ever kill myself, I thought it would be in the summer.Once I had asked, ‘But are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and Jonathan said, “I’m socially progressive but fiscally conservative,” and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, “Is that like being bisexual?” Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk.After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’
‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.I decided that I wanted to say to Sin-Jun, I like your skirt. But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting. I kept rehearsing the sentence in my head, examining it for flaws.When I was in junior high, I used to think I would turn out to be one of the guys, and boys would say, 'Oh, you're so great,' but they wouldn't date me. I thought I wasn't pretty enough. But then I got to Ault and first of all, I'm not really friends with any guys. And then, with you this year, I thought, if Cross will keep hooking up with me, maybe I'm okay after all. But time passed and I never became your girlfriend. And so then I thought, not only was I wrong, but my life turned out to be the opposite of what I expected. Meaning, it wasn't my appearance--that's not the bad thing about me. It's my personality. But how do I know which part? I have no idea. I've tried to think about if it's one thing in isolation or everything together, or what can I do to fix it, or how can I convince you. Then I thought, maybe it is my looks, maybe I was right before. And I never figured it out. Obviously, I didn't. But I've spent a lot of time this year trying. And the reason I'm telling you all this is that I want you to know no one in my life has ever made me feel worse about myself than you.I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable.By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn't have to be there while she got it in order.I bet things would be easier for you if you either realized you're not that weird or decided that being weird isn't bad.But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else.I heard Gillian say, with a laugh, “At this point, does anyone expect the liberals not to be total hypocrites?” She was oblivious to the possibility that perhaps not everyone present shared her views, and I thought, You’re sixteen. How can you already be a Republican?And I didn't yet understand that just because you can recognize what another person wants and just because that person is older and more powerful than you are, you don't have to give it to them.It was more when things slowed down, during the parts when you were supposed to have fun, that my lack of friends felt obvious- on Saturday nights, when there dances I didn't go to, and during visitation... I spent those times hiding. Most of the other girls propped open their doors for visitation, but we kept ours shut.Of course, now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the idea that being a nuisance was that big a deal? Sometimes now I think of all the opportunities I didn't take - to get a manicure in town, to watch television in another dorm, to go outside for a snowball fight - and of how refusal became a habit for me, and then I felt it would be conspicuous if I ever did join in.I cried because I knew for certain that I was leaving home, and abruptly, I did not know if it was such a good idea- I realized that I, like my parents, had never believed I'd actually go.... and when I dared to glance at him, he was looking at me in a way that was both predatory and tender (I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that my life since then had been spent in pursuit of that look, and that I have yet to find it a second time in just that balance; perhaps it doesn't, after high school, exist in that balance) and it was because whatever he was about to do was exactly what I wanted while also scaring the hell out of me that I folded my arms and said, "I'll have to take this all under advisement." I knew immediately that I'd sounded sarcastic, and I did nothing to correct the impression. I guess that I had meant to sound that way, because this was the most terrifying thing in the world: that he knew me--he did know me, after all--and that knowing each other, we were going to kiss.
Chapter 6: I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me. Chapter 2: The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call hi...
2020-08-23 18:10
Chapter 6:
I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.
Chapter 2:
The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.
Chapter 2
This phenomenon—being gripped by an overwhelming wave of feeling that was clearly not the feeling of the people around me—had also happened at a pep rally: It made me uncomfortable, because I didn’t want anyone to notice that I wasn’t jumping up and down or cheering, and it also thrilled me, because it made the world seem full of possibilities that could make my heart pound.
Chapter 6: Insecurity about oneself.别人爱的究竟是你这个人，还是你的身份、外表和条件呢？爱究竟有多少是博弈：
What I wanted to know about Dave was, had he noticed me before that time in the hospital, or had I piqued his interest during that conversation? But why would he have noticed me before, or why would I have piqued his interest then? Was I the best that he could do?
Chapter 4: 特别好的有局限的first person narrator，一方面主角和其他同学一样讲着种族歧视其实不存在，另一方面小说里时时处处都体现了有种族的划分，给书增加了一种复杂的况味。如果另一个同学是叙事者（比如那个黑人男生或者Little，将是非常不一样的故事）：
Racism didn’t exist at Ault. Or it did, of course it did, but not like that. Kids came from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, with parents who had emigrated from Pakistan, Thailand, Colombia, and some kids had families that still lived far away—in my dorm alone, there were girls from Zimbabwe and Latvia. And no one ever made slurs, it wasn’t like you got ostracized if you weren’t white. Racism seemed to me like a holdover from my parents’ generation, something that was not entirely gone but had fallen out of favor…
Chapter 2:
I knew at least that I’d lost the glow that surrounds you when the teachers think you’re one of the smart, responsible ones, that glow that shines brighter every time you raise your hand in class to say the perfect thing, or you run out of room in a blue book during an exam and have to ask for a second one.
Chapter 4: insecurity causes her to feel more, rather than less, judgmental towards others:
I felt mortified on her behalf. This was another misstep, talking about Ault the way a magazine article might, or the way someone in town—someone who worked at the grocery store, or the barber shop—would.
Chapter 6 “She feels lonely because Ault can be an alienating environment for people who do not come from wealthy families, but, in many cases, she worsens her own feelings of loneliness by underestimating others' capacities for emotion, assuming that her classmates are either happy or simply resigned to feeling mediocre.” But the truth is other people also have feelings and they are unique and busy with their own struggles.
The way she looked at me was so hopeless, so exhausted, that it seemed scornful. I had an inkling then that perhaps I’d underestimated her. Perhaps in the past I hadn’t given her credit for having opinions or experiencing discontent—for being like me.
Chapter 8:
(I used to fear, and I wasn’t completely wrong, that this was what the rest of the world was like. Hardly ever did it matter if you brushed your hair before driving to the grocery store, rarely did you work in an office where you cared what more than two or three people thought of you. At Ault, caring about everything was draining, but it was also exhilarating.)
Chapter 8: life is so vast and your world is so small and petty. Yet it’s still your world.
But these people, making their way through the morning, all their meetings and errands and obligations. And this was only here, in this station at this moment. The world was so big!I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that's almost unbearable.Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted.This possibility was not flattering to me; it was terrifying. There were other things a guy could think I was, and he wouldn't be entirely wrong - nice, or loyal, or maybe interesting. Not that I was always any of those thing, but in certain situations, it was conceivable. But to be seen as pretty was to be fundamentally misunderstood. First of all, I wasn't pretty, and on top of that I didn't take care of myself like a pretty girl did; I wasn't even one of the unpretty girls who passes as pretty through effort and association. If a guy believed my value to lie in my looks, it meant either that he'd somehow been mislead and would eventually be disappointed, or that he had very low standards.If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.... it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of something than the thing itself...and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was just so tiring to have to worry about whether your face was peeling, or to have to laugh at stories that weren’t funny.There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I’d think how girls’ coaches were never that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world to be were young and strong and fast. To play a great game of high school basketball-it was something I myself had never done, but I could tell-made you know what it was to be alive. How much in an adult life can compare to that? Granted, there are margaritas, or there’s no homework, but there are also puffy white bagels under neon lights in the conference room, there’s waiting for the plumber, making small talk with your boring neighbor.I actually liked the disolation of winter; it was the season when it was okay to be unhappy. If I were to ever kill myself, I thought it would be in the summer.Once I had asked, ‘But are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and Jonathan said, “I’m socially progressive but fiscally conservative,” and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, “Is that like being bisexual?” Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk.After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’
‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.I decided that I wanted to say to Sin-Jun, I like your skirt. But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting. I kept rehearsing the sentence in my head, examining it for flaws.When I was in junior high, I used to think I would turn out to be one of the guys, and boys would say, 'Oh, you're so great,' but they wouldn't date me. I thought I wasn't pretty enough. But then I got to Ault and first of all, I'm not really friends with any guys. And then, with you this year, I thought, if Cross will keep hooking up with me, maybe I'm okay after all. But time passed and I never became your girlfriend. And so then I thought, not only was I wrong, but my life turned out to be the opposite of what I expected. Meaning, it wasn't my appearance--that's not the bad thing about me. It's my personality. But how do I know which part? I have no idea. I've tried to think about if it's one thing in isolation or everything together, or what can I do to fix it, or how can I convince you. Then I thought, maybe it is my looks, maybe I was right before. And I never figured it out. Obviously, I didn't. But I've spent a lot of time this year trying. And the reason I'm telling you all this is that I want you to know no one in my life has ever made me feel worse about myself than you.I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable.By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn't have to be there while she got it in order.I bet things would be easier for you if you either realized you're not that weird or decided that being weird isn't bad.But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else.I heard Gillian say, with a laugh, “At this point, does anyone expect the liberals not to be total hypocrites?” She was oblivious to the possibility that perhaps not everyone present shared her views, and I thought, You’re sixteen. How can you already be a Republican?And I didn't yet understand that just because you can recognize what another person wants and just because that person is older and more powerful than you are, you don't have to give it to them.It was more when things slowed down, during the parts when you were supposed to have fun, that my lack of friends felt obvious- on Saturday nights, when there dances I didn't go to, and during visitation... I spent those times hiding. Most of the other girls propped open their doors for visitation, but we kept ours shut.Of course, now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the idea that being a nuisance was that big a deal? Sometimes now I think of all the opportunities I didn't take - to get a manicure in town, to watch television in another dorm, to go outside for a snowball fight - and of how refusal became a habit for me, and then I felt it would be conspicuous if I ever did join in.I cried because I knew for certain that I was leaving home, and abruptly, I did not know if it was such a good idea- I realized that I, like my parents, had never believed I'd actually go.... and when I dared to glance at him, he was looking at me in a way that was both predatory and tender (I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that my life since then had been spent in pursuit of that look, and that I have yet to find it a second time in just that balance; perhaps it doesn't, after high school, exist in that balance) and it was because whatever he was about to do was exactly what I wanted while also scaring the hell out of me that I folded my arms and said, "I'll have to take this all under advisement." I knew immediately that I'd sounded sarcastic, and I did nothing to correct the impression. I guess that I had meant to sound that way, because this was the most terrifying thing in the world: that he knew me--he did know me, after all--and that knowing each other, we were going to kiss.
Chapter 6: I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me. Chapter 2: The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call hi...
2020-08-23 18:10
Chapter 6:
I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.
Chapter 2:
The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.
Chapter 2
This phenomenon—being gripped by an overwhelming wave of feeling that was clearly not the feeling of the people around me—had also happened at a pep rally: It made me uncomfortable, because I didn’t want anyone to notice that I wasn’t jumping up and down or cheering, and it also thrilled me, because it made the world seem full of possibilities that could make my heart pound.
Chapter 6: Insecurity about oneself.别人爱的究竟是你这个人，还是你的身份、外表和条件呢？爱究竟有多少是博弈：
What I wanted to know about Dave was, had he noticed me before that time in the hospital, or had I piqued his interest during that conversation? But why would he have noticed me before, or why would I have piqued his interest then? Was I the best that he could do?
Chapter 4: 特别好的有局限的first person narrator，一方面主角和其他同学一样讲着种族歧视其实不存在，另一方面小说里时时处处都体现了有种族的划分，给书增加了一种复杂的况味。如果另一个同学是叙事者（比如那个黑人男生或者Little，将是非常不一样的故事）：
Racism didn’t exist at Ault. Or it did, of course it did, but not like that. Kids came from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, with parents who had emigrated from Pakistan, Thailand, Colombia, and some kids had families that still lived far away—in my dorm alone, there were girls from Zimbabwe and Latvia. And no one ever made slurs, it wasn’t like you got ostracized if you weren’t white. Racism seemed to me like a holdover from my parents’ generation, something that was not entirely gone but had fallen out of favor…
Chapter 2:
I knew at least that I’d lost the glow that surrounds you when the teachers think you’re one of the smart, responsible ones, that glow that shines brighter every time you raise your hand in class to say the perfect thing, or you run out of room in a blue book during an exam and have to ask for a second one.
Chapter 4: insecurity causes her to feel more, rather than less, judgmental towards others:
I felt mortified on her behalf. This was another misstep, talking about Ault the way a magazine article might, or the way someone in town—someone who worked at the grocery store, or the barber shop—would.
Chapter 6 “She feels lonely because Ault can be an alienating environment for people who do not come from wealthy families, but, in many cases, she worsens her own feelings of loneliness by underestimating others' capacities for emotion, assuming that her classmates are either happy or simply resigned to feeling mediocre.” But the truth is other people also have feelings and they are unique and busy with their own struggles.
The way she looked at me was so hopeless, so exhausted, that it seemed scornful. I had an inkling then that perhaps I’d underestimated her. Perhaps in the past I hadn’t given her credit for having opinions or experiencing discontent—for being like me.
Chapter 8:
(I used to fear, and I wasn’t completely wrong, that this was what the rest of the world was like. Hardly ever did it matter if you brushed your hair before driving to the grocery store, rarely did you work in an office where you cared what more than two or three people thought of you. At Ault, caring about everything was draining, but it was also exhilarating.)
Chapter 8: life is so vast and your world is so small and petty. Yet it’s still your world.
But these people, making their way through the morning, all their meetings and errands and obligations. And this was only here, in this station at this moment. The world was so big!I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.... nothing broke my heart like the slow death of a shared joke that had once seemed genuinely funny.I have always found the times when another person recognizes you to be strangely sad; I suspect the pathos of these moments is their rareness, the way they contrast with most daily encounters. That reminder that it can be different, that you need not go through your life unknown but that you probably still will--that is the part that's almost unbearable.Later on, when I tried to imagine how I might have ruined things, that would occur to me - that I'd so rarely resisted, that I hadn't made it hard enough for him. Maybe it was like gathering your strength and hurling your body against a door you believe to be locked, and then the door opens easily - it wasn't locked at all - and you're standing looking into the room, trying to remember what it was you thought you wanted.This possibility was not flattering to me; it was terrifying. There were other things a guy could think I was, and he wouldn't be entirely wrong - nice, or loyal, or maybe interesting. Not that I was always any of those thing, but in certain situations, it was conceivable. But to be seen as pretty was to be fundamentally misunderstood. First of all, I wasn't pretty, and on top of that I didn't take care of myself like a pretty girl did; I wasn't even one of the unpretty girls who passes as pretty through effort and association. If a guy believed my value to lie in my looks, it meant either that he'd somehow been mislead and would eventually be disappointed, or that he had very low standards.If you knew where your happiness came from, it gave you patience. You realized that a lot of the time, you were just waiting out a situation, and that took the pressure off; you no longer looked to every interaction to actually do something for you.... it struck me as so hard to believe I was really getting what I wanted; it was always easier to feel the lack of something than the thing itself...and I thought how liking a boy was just the same as believing you wanted to know a secret - everything was better when you were denied and could feel tormented by curiousity or loneliness. But the moment of something happening was treacherous. It was just so tiring to have to worry about whether your face was peeling, or to have to laugh at stories that weren’t funny.There are people we treat wrong and later, we're prepared to treat other people right.Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I’d think how girls’ coaches were never that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world to be were young and strong and fast. To play a great game of high school basketball-it was something I myself had never done, but I could tell-made you know what it was to be alive. How much in an adult life can compare to that? Granted, there are margaritas, or there’s no homework, but there are also puffy white bagels under neon lights in the conference room, there’s waiting for the plumber, making small talk with your boring neighbor.I actually liked the disolation of winter; it was the season when it was okay to be unhappy. If I were to ever kill myself, I thought it would be in the summer.Once I had asked, ‘But are you a Democrat or a Republican?” and Jonathan said, “I’m socially progressive but fiscally conservative,” and Doug Miles, a football player who also came to Sunday breakfast but only ever read the sports section and ignored everyone, lifted his head and said, “Is that like being bisexual?” Which I actually thought was funny, even though I was pretty sure Doug was a jerk.After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’
‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.But I never thought of who he wasn't, I never had to explain or defend him to myself, I didn't even care what we talked about.I decided that I wanted to say to Sin-Jun, I like your skirt. But sometimes speaking is so hard! It's like standing still, then sprinting. I kept rehearsing the sentence in my head, examining it for flaws.When I was in junior high, I used to think I would turn out to be one of the guys, and boys would say, 'Oh, you're so great,' but they wouldn't date me. I thought I wasn't pretty enough. But then I got to Ault and first of all, I'm not really friends with any guys. And then, with you this year, I thought, if Cross will keep hooking up with me, maybe I'm okay after all. But time passed and I never became your girlfriend. And so then I thought, not only was I wrong, but my life turned out to be the opposite of what I expected. Meaning, it wasn't my appearance--that's not the bad thing about me. It's my personality. But how do I know which part? I have no idea. I've tried to think about if it's one thing in isolation or everything together, or what can I do to fix it, or how can I convince you. Then I thought, maybe it is my looks, maybe I was right before. And I never figured it out. Obviously, I didn't. But I've spent a lot of time this year trying. And the reason I'm telling you all this is that I want you to know no one in my life has ever made me feel worse about myself than you.I think adults forget just how much faith teenagers can have in them, just how willing to believe that adults, by virtue of being adults, know absolute truths, or that absolute truths are even knowable.By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn't have to be there while she got it in order.I bet things would be easier for you if you either realized you're not that weird or decided that being weird isn't bad.But I was living my life sideway. I did not act on what I wanted, I did not say the things I thought, and being so stifled and clamped all the time left me exhausted; no matter what I was doing, I was always imagining something else.I heard Gillian say, with a laugh, “At this point, does anyone expect the liberals not to be total hypocrites?” She was oblivious to the possibility that perhaps not everyone present shared her views, and I thought, You’re sixteen. How can you already be a Republican?And I didn't yet understand that just because you can recognize what another person wants and just because that person is older and more powerful than you are, you don't have to give it to them.It was more when things slowed down, during the parts when you were supposed to have fun, that my lack of friends felt obvious- on Saturday nights, when there dances I didn't go to, and during visitation... I spent those times hiding. Most of the other girls propped open their doors for visitation, but we kept ours shut.Of course, now I wonder where I had gotten the idea that for you to participate in a gathering, the other people had to really, really want you to be there and that anything short of rabid enthusiasm on their part meant you'd be a nuisance. Where had I gotten the idea that being a nuisance was that big a deal? Sometimes now I think of all the opportunities I didn't take - to get a manicure in town, to watch television in another dorm, to go outside for a snowball fight - and of how refusal became a habit for me, and then I felt it would be conspicuous if I ever did join in.I cried because I knew for certain that I was leaving home, and abruptly, I did not know if it was such a good idea- I realized that I, like my parents, had never believed I'd actually go.... and when I dared to glance at him, he was looking at me in a way that was both predatory and tender (I do not think it's an exaggeration to say that my life since then had been spent in pursuit of that look, and that I have yet to find it a second time in just that balance; perhaps it doesn't, after high school, exist in that balance) and it was because whatever he was about to do was exactly what I wanted while also scaring the hell out of me that I folded my arms and said, "I'll have to take this all under advisement." I knew immediately that I'd sounded sarcastic, and I did nothing to correct the impression. I guess that I had meant to sound that way, because this was the most terrifying thing in the world: that he knew me--he did know me, after all--and that knowing each other, we were going to kiss.
Violet
人民文学出版社2006版
robin1123
人民文学出版社2006版
仙奴陶陶
人民文学出版社2006版
0 有用 tideland 2008-03-01
I wish I had a life like this.
0 有用 普宁困意 2020-11-27
特别喜欢细腻敏感普通女孩的高中生故事 也可以说是Cross跌落神坛吧 从一开始青春女孩都幻想的偶遇开始 可以遥远的仰望崇拜着 到后面还可以和男神一被窝 也是惊了 当时就觉得完蛋了我们Lee被吃死了 已经不是能回味的甜美暗恋了 觉得会被伤的 Cross这个b段位太高了 到毕业前篮球场的对峙 我还是很钦佩Lee的勇气的 就像Cross室友Devin说的 这几年什么都是Cross的 好成绩好人缘好女孩都... 特别喜欢细腻敏感普通女孩的高中生故事 也可以说是Cross跌落神坛吧 从一开始青春女孩都幻想的偶遇开始 可以遥远的仰望崇拜着 到后面还可以和男神一被窝 也是惊了 当时就觉得完蛋了我们Lee被吃死了 已经不是能回味的甜美暗恋了 觉得会被伤的 Cross这个b段位太高了 到毕业前篮球场的对峙 我还是很钦佩Lee的勇气的 就像Cross室友Devin说的 这几年什么都是Cross的 好成绩好人缘好女孩都是他的 就是有这样的人吧 这种男的快独自美丽吧别来招惹我们普通女孩啊！这一条主爱情线中间又很多Lee的细腻小心思和朋友家人之间的快乐和误解 和食堂男孩的心动 “feel like have some reasons to apologize明明自己什么都没做错 都是low self-esteem的锅 (展开)
0 有用 Zooey佐伊 2010-10-11
it's kind of like my life back to connecticut. i do miss some pieces from that catholic boarding school, but for the most part, i can't be more glad that i left that place forever, i am fucking free.
1 有用 hermaphrodite 2016-06-16
prep school的青春期少女，popular kids, outsider, 成长
0 有用 Prufrock的情歌 2013-11-17
很多东西只有自己经历了才会懂得。prep school life的酸楚与迷惘，旁人看来或许觉得太作，但当你身处这个bubble其中的时候，那个小小的校园就是你的世界，你的梦想，你的一切。
0 有用 澈 2020-12-12
就有点青春期的无病呻吟吧。。。这写法就是明明是丑小鸭却硬要觉得自己有主角光环。。。
0 有用 普宁困意 2020-11-27
特别喜欢细腻敏感普通女孩的高中生故事 也可以说是Cross跌落神坛吧 从一开始青春女孩都幻想的偶遇开始 可以遥远的仰望崇拜着 到后面还可以和男神一被窝 也是惊了 当时就觉得完蛋了我们Lee被吃死了 已经不是能回味的甜美暗恋了 觉得会被伤的 Cross这个b段位太高了 到毕业前篮球场的对峙 我还是很钦佩Lee的勇气的 就像Cross室友Devin说的 这几年什么都是Cross的 好成绩好人缘好女孩都... 特别喜欢细腻敏感普通女孩的高中生故事 也可以说是Cross跌落神坛吧 从一开始青春女孩都幻想的偶遇开始 可以遥远的仰望崇拜着 到后面还可以和男神一被窝 也是惊了 当时就觉得完蛋了我们Lee被吃死了 已经不是能回味的甜美暗恋了 觉得会被伤的 Cross这个b段位太高了 到毕业前篮球场的对峙 我还是很钦佩Lee的勇气的 就像Cross室友Devin说的 这几年什么都是Cross的 好成绩好人缘好女孩都是他的 就是有这样的人吧 这种男的快独自美丽吧别来招惹我们普通女孩啊！这一条主爱情线中间又很多Lee的细腻小心思和朋友家人之间的快乐和误解 和食堂男孩的心动 “feel like have some reasons to apologize明明自己什么都没做错 都是low self-esteem的锅 (展开)
2 有用 阿依达 2020-08-23
Self-conscious自卑人士的自白。十几年前我第一次读的时候还没经历过异国他乡私立学校的一切，却已经觉得这本书似道出了我loser的心声。特别emotionally dense的奇书，令我切肤地回忆起自己的挣扎、无力、肤浅、窝囊、被动和可笑。“I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like so... Self-conscious自卑人士的自白。十几年前我第一次读的时候还没经历过异国他乡私立学校的一切，却已经觉得这本书似道出了我loser的心声。特别emotionally dense的奇书，令我切肤地回忆起自己的挣扎、无力、肤浅、窝囊、被动和可笑。“I wanted my life to start—but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.” (展开)
0 有用 猜猜我的头像 2020-07-09
Curtis Sittenfeld窥探描写复杂纠结的心理活动是一等一的专家。在读的时候我本身的不适和着迷也许是Lee的高中生活完完全全反应了我在大学时期的心理活动：一个外乡人来到一个富裕的郊区，一个conformist的社区，自视甚高又时时刻刻被提醒自己和他人的不同，又爱和人比较赢了洋洋得意输了恨不得躲在宿舍饭都不敢吃。Lee对Cross的感情我自己也不是没有在不同的人身上经历过。现在回头想想十分... Curtis Sittenfeld窥探描写复杂纠结的心理活动是一等一的专家。在读的时候我本身的不适和着迷也许是Lee的高中生活完完全全反应了我在大学时期的心理活动：一个外乡人来到一个富裕的郊区，一个conformist的社区，自视甚高又时时刻刻被提醒自己和他人的不同，又爱和人比较赢了洋洋得意输了恨不得躲在宿舍饭都不敢吃。Lee对Cross的感情我自己也不是没有在不同的人身上经历过。现在回头想想十分幼稚可笑还招人讨厌，但曾经几年这也是我全部的世界。故事的结尾Lee在波士顿坐车，发现世界那么大，人人那么不同，体验那么丰富，不都是金发碧眼的有钱漂亮女孩，何尝不是我来到纽约的体验。有的时候长大也许不是克服了困难，而是从某个事件某个地点“毕业”，自然地和过去的自己说再见，毕业成更好的自己。 (展开)
0 有用 萨特利夫 2018-06-02
抱着非常低的期望，但成为很大的惊喜。低自尊、眼高手低、overly self-conscious的青春期女孩敏感心理刻画入木三分，配以一个如影随形无时无刻笼罩在主人公头顶的主题：如何面对优势文化？如何面对强势文化是每个人在一生中不同阶段总归要面临的问题，它大到是你的出身、阶层、语言、文化，小到你是如何发音你每句话末的尾音。Intersectionality决定每个人总有一种社会属性将她处于劣势地位... 抱着非常低的期望，但成为很大的惊喜。低自尊、眼高手低、overly self-conscious的青春期女孩敏感心理刻画入木三分，配以一个如影随形无时无刻笼罩在主人公头顶的主题：如何面对优势文化？如何面对强势文化是每个人在一生中不同阶段总归要面临的问题，它大到是你的出身、阶层、语言、文化，小到你是如何发音你每句话末的尾音。Intersectionality决定每个人总有一种社会属性将她处于劣势地位，而我们大多数人能力却不足以允许自己和这些优势文化彻底分道扬镳，只能在心理层面寻求和解。高中四年里，主人公在这个问题上没有丝毫长进，but why is that so important to be liked? (展开)