book review
Title: I am Charlotte Simmons
Author: Tom Wolfe
# of Pages: 752
Summary (from amazon.com): Tom Wolfe, the master social novelist of our time, the spot-on chronicler of all things contemporary and cultural, presents a sensational new novel about life, love, and learning--or the lack of it--amid today's American colleges.
Our story unfolds at fictional Dupont University: those Olympian halls of scholarship housing the cream of America's youth, the roseate Gothic spires and manicured lawns suffused with tradition . . . Or so it appears to beautiful, brilliant Charlotte Simmons, a sheltered freshman from North Carolina. But Charlotte soon learns, to her mounting dismay, that for the upper-crust coeds of Dupont, sex, cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.
As Charlotte encounters the paragons of Dupont's privileged elite--her roommate, Beverly, a Groton-educated Brahmin in lusty pursuit of lacrosse players; Jojo Johanssen, the only white starting player on Dupont's godlike basketball team, whose position is threatened by a hotshot black freshman from the projects; the Young Turk of Saint Ray fraternity, Hoyt Thorpe, whose heady sense of entitlement and social domination is clinched by his accidental brawl with a bodyguard for the governor of California; and Adam Geller, one of the Millennial Mutants who run the university's "independent" newspaper and who consider themselves the last bastion of intellectual endeavor on the sex-crazed, jock-obsessed campus--she is seduced by the heady glamour of acceptance, betraying both her values and upbringing before she grasps the power of being different--and the exotic allure of her own innocence.
With his trademark satirical wit and famously sharp eye for telling detail, Wolfe draws on extensive observations at campuses across the country to immortalize the early-21st-century college-going experience.
Opinion: I really love stories that are part coming of age, part 'collegiate life' novels because I love seeing the comparisons to my own experiences. Tom Wolfe did NOT disappoint with this book that, while indulging certain tropes and themes that are typical of the genre, still managed to engage me as a reader and surprised me wholly with the direction the story takes and who Charlotte becomes as the protagonist. Without giving too much away, it was extremely interesting to see the similarities between the fictitious 'Dupont' and my own Ivy League experience as an 'outsider', though not to the extent that Charlotte was. I loved this book - probably more than I like Prep. by Curtis Sittenfeld, which tackles a similar theme - and was getting agitated when I had to stop reading it. Well written, spot-on (in many cases) with his characterizations of certain 'types' you meet in college, and both inspiring if not a little sad by the time you get to the end, I found myself rooting for Charlotte the entire time and just captivated by her perceptions of herself by the end.
Now Reading: The World According to Garp by John Irving
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