Sometimes I feel like Curtis Sittenfeld Has Been Reading My Diary

Novelist Curtis Sittenfeld writes so convincingly from the perspective of a neurotic woman surrounded by people for whom life seems so much easier that sometimes I think she’s been reading my diary. The thought processes and behavior patterns of her characters are so familiar that it’s possible she’s even reading my mind.

I picked up Prep one day at Barnes & Noble as I was heading toward the checkout line because I remembered reading in Elle several months previously that it was an insightful and thought-provoking novel from a promising young author. I wound up so immersed in main character Lee Fiora’s world that it felt difficult to know where I ended and the book began.

In her most recent novel The Man of My Dreams, she hits even closer to home. Her main character wants so desperately to be loved, but part of her feels impossibly worthy of the genuine article. Toward the end of the book, protagonist Hannah Gavener muses, “When I think of Henry and Oliver and Mike, I feel as if they are three different models — templates, almost — and I wonder if they are the only three in the world: the man who is with you completely, the man who is with you but not with you, the man who will get as close to you as he can without ever becoming yours. It would be arrogant to claim no other dynamics exist just because I haven’t experienced them, but I have to say that I can’t imagine what they are. I hope that I am wrong.”