Welcome to My So Called Life, the book. Curtis Sittenfeld manages to capture high school here like few others have. Childhood, Adolescence, Puberty, sure, there better and more intimate illustrations of those particular times in one's life (Rule of the Bone, Catcher in the Rye, etc.) but High School? The act and the place and the social structure? The fear and the pressure and the naivete? Sittenfeld gives us the real deal (often whether we want it or not). And she's generally pretty smart about it. Occasionally witty, always exacting. What she also gives us is a distinctly female voice, whereas in other great works of adolescence (see above) you'd be hard pressed to find something worth reading that wasn't from a male perspective.
The novel drags a bit in the middle, and I'm not entirely certain if I was satisfied with the last thirty pages or so. But it's a page turner. And I'd like to meet the person out there who doesn't flashback to being 15 while reading it.
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