Books by Curtis Sittenfeld
“Please don’t be put off by the cover! This doesn’t look like an adult fiction book, but Curtis Sittenfeld is a very serious and accomplished writer. It’s a coming of age novel set at a fancy school in Massachusetts called Ault, and its entirely inside the head of this young girl called Lee, who is a very unlikeable, passive, whiny and kind of standoffish young woman, who’s convinced that she’s the consummate victim. That’s what makes the book such a great read; it’s a microscopically accurate, vivid portrayal of adolescent awkwardness and interiority.” Read more...
The Best Boarding School Novels
Anbara Salam, Novelist
Interviews where books by Curtis Sittenfeld were recommended
The Best Campus Novels
Life in an academic institution can be a curiously intense experience. As a result, the hot-house atmosphere of a university campus or boarding school presents a fitting backdrop for novels exploring ambition, power dynamics, crushes, and sexual crises. Here, we’ve pulled together a list of campus novels that have been recommended on Five Books over the years, via our interviews with literary scholars, bestselling authors and book prize judges.
The Best Boarding School Novels, recommended by Anbara Salam
Boarding schools make great settings for novels, says Anbara Salam, author of coming-of-age drama Belladonna. The combination of immense privilege with the claustrophobia of a closed society can create an intense pressure cooker atmosphere in which characters might be forged.
