Noblesse Malaise: Required Preppy Readings.
Discover the ultimate required reading list for noblesse malaise, featuring preppy books like Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, The Hotel New Hampshire, and Love Story. Explore curated fiction on privilege, boarding school angst, and upper-class ennui from John Irving, Judy Blume, and more.
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The Hotel New Hampshire
by John Irving
The New York Times bestselling saga of a most unusual family from the award-winning author of The World According to Garp. âThe first of my fatherâs illusions was that bears could survive the life lived by human beings, and the second was that human beings could survive a life led in hotels.â So says John Berry, son of a hapless dreamer, brother to a cadre of eccentric siblings, and chronicler of the lives lived, the loves experienced, the deaths met, and the myriad strange and wonderful times encountered by the family Berry. Hoteliers, pet-bear owners, friends of Freud (the animal trainer and vaudevillian, that is), and playthings of mad fate, they âdream onâ in a funny, sad, outrageous, and moving novel by the remarkable author of A Prayer for Owen Meany and Last Night in Twisted River.
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Old School
by Tobias Wolff
The protagonist of Tobias Wolffâs shrewdlyâand at times devastatinglyâobserved first novel is a boy at an elite prep school in 1960. He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself. The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.
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Summer Sisters: A Read with Jenna Pick
by Judy Blume
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY ⢠âSummer Sisters is a book to return to again and again.ââColleen Hoover âAs warm as a summer breeze blowing through your hair, as nostalgic as James Taylor singing âHow Sweet It Is.â You remember. So does Judy Blume. How sweet it was.ââChicago Tribune In the summer of 1977, Victoria Leonardâs world changes forever when Caitlin Somers chooses her as a friend. Dazzling, reckless Caitlin welcomes Vix into the heart of her sprawling, eccentric family, opening doors to a world of unimaginable privilege, sweeping her away to vacations on Marthaâs Vineyard, an enchanting place where the two friends become âsummer sisters.â Now, years later, Vix is working in New York City. Caitlin is getting married on the Vineyard. And the early magic of their long, complicated friendship has faded. But Caitlin begs Vix to come to her wedding, to be her maid of honor. And Vix knows that she will goâbecause she wants to understand what happened during that last shattering summer. And, after all these years, she needs to know why her best friendâher summer sisterâstill has the power to break her heart.
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Love Story
by Erich Segal
Oliver Barrett IV, a wealthy jock from a stuffy WASP family on his way to a Harvard degree and a career in law . . . Jenny Cavilleri, a sharp-tongued, working-class beauty studying music at Radcliffe . . . Opposites in nearly every way, Oliver and Jenny are kindred spirits from vastly different worlds. Falling deeply and powerfully, their attraction to one another defies everything they have ever believedâas they share a passion far greater than anything they dreamed possible . . . and explore the wonder of a love that must end too soon. One of the most adored novels of our time, this is the book that defined a generationâa story of uncompromising devotion, of life as it really is . . . and love that changes everything.
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Prep
by Curtis Sittenfeld
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ⢠A modern classic of adolescent angst and ambition set in the world of prep school, from the author of Romantic Comedy and Eligibleââa tart and complex tale of social class, race, and gender politicsâ (The Boston Globe) One of The New York Times Book Reviewâs Ten Best Books of the Year 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 schoolâs 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 ofâand, ultimately, a participant inâtheir 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 sheâs 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, Leeâs experiencesâcomplicated 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 distantâcoalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.
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Testimony
by Anita Shreve
A New England boarding school is rocked in the wake of a sex scandal in which participants were caught on videotape, a situation that derails the innocence and best intentions of students, parents, and others in life-shattering ways.
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The Stories of John Cheever
by John Cheever
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER ⢠NATIONAL BESTSELLER ⢠A seminal collection from one of the true masters of the short story. Spanning the duration of Cheeverâs long and distinguished career, these sixty-one stories chronicle and encapsulate the lives of what has been called âthe greatest generation.â From the early wonder and disillusionment of city life in âThe Enormous Radioâ to the surprising discoveries and common mysteries of suburbia in âThe Housebreaker of Shady Hillâ and âThe Swimmer,â these are tales that have helped define the form. Featuring a preface by the Pulizter Prize-winning author, The Stories of John Cheever brings together some of the finest short stories ever written. "Cheeverâs crowning achievement is the ability to be simultaneously generous and cynical, to see that the absurd and the profound can reside in the same moment, and to acknowledge both at the detriment of neither." âThe Guardian
