Episode 7.4: ‘Prep’ by Curtis Sittenfeld
It’s time for our dark academia adjacent title for season seven and we’re tackling Curtis Sittenfeld’s classic campus novel, ‘Prep’.
Sophie read this about a decade ago and has had a lingering love for it ever since, so it has some big shoes to fill on this reread and for Sarah’s first read.
Lee Fiora is a shy fourteen-year-old when she leaves small-town Indiana for a scholarship at Ault, an exclusive boarding school in Massachusetts. Her head is filled with images from the school brochure of handsome boys in sweaters leaning against old brick buildings, girls running with lacrosse sticks across pristine athletics fields, everyone singing hymns in chapel. But as she soon learns, Ault is a minefield of unstated rules and incomprehensible social rituals, and Lee must work hard to find - and maintain - her place in the pecking order.
'Prep’ is a modern classic generally in fiction, but also in the realm of campus novels. We can’t wait to see how this informs what we know as dark academia.
In this episode we discuss:
Unlikeable characters and narrators
Sexism, fatphobia and racism
The jump in language and society from 2005 to now
You can listen to it here:
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Prep’ by Curtis Sittenfeld
‘An Education in Malice’ by ST Gibson
OTHER MEDIA AND POP CULTURE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Gilmore Girls’ (2000-07)
If you fancy taking a chance on ‘Prep’, we’d love it if you considered using our bookshop.org link below to purchase your copy of the book which helps us fund ‘The Dark Academicals’ and gives back to independent bookshops at no extra cost to you.
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