This is what makes Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep so much more compelling than any other regular YA drama

By complete accident, I am part of a Fandom Family. My household (independent of me, but usually plus Lainey) counts down to the release of long-awaited adaptations and sequels, franchise extensions, and Sonic The Hedgehog 4.

Most of it is not my bag, but I envy the ritual of it: the anticipation, casting debates, speculation on changes that’re brilliant in retrospect. I got a taste with Netflix’s gorgeous, fleeting The Baby-Sitters Club adaptation, but my peak memories of that fandom are me, alone in my room, post-Scholastic book order delivery. Of course, I’ve found my people here, when writing about RENT or Veronica Mars or etc, but yesterday, I felt a thrill I never had before. Because Netflix is bringing Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep to series.

I’ve sent Lainey many, many rapid-fire messages in our 21 years but I don’t know if she’s responded to any as fast and as asdfjkl;asdfjkl; as she did yesterday afternoon.

Because Prep? is ours. We’ve discussed before how Lainey and I fell in love on the phone, and our language of love was to spend hours digging into everything we read. When we started talking, Prep had just come out, and we dissected it week after week, obsessed with the incredibly honest but mercurial main character Lee, the nuance of things left unsaid in the elite boarding school setting (that, let’s be honest, I longed for) and of course, the teenage reverie that was Cross Sugarman. What, you don’t know Cross?

If you haven’t read Prep, I am so damned jealous of you getting to experience it for the first time. It’s a fictional memoir of sorts, told by Lee Fiora, a scholarship student at Ault, an exclusive Massachusetts boarding school. Lee understands she’s incredibly fortunate, knows she’s supposed to blossom and enrich herself due to the incredible opportunities she has… and to a large degree, she doesn’t.

That’s what makes the story so much more compelling than any ‘regular’ YA drama. Lee is an imperfect protagonist, frequently frustrating. Her awkwardness, reticence, and insecurity aren’t just charming foibles she’s going to shrug off by senior prom – they’re baked into who she is and colour every decision and memory. Just one little excerpt I love involves Lee’s inner monologue while talking to her best friend and roommate, Martha:

“You’re my best friend, Lee. I can disagree with your choices and still care about you.”

Well, aren’t you complex? I thought.

You see it, right? The prickly, recalcitrant, “ungrateful” girl at the centre of this show is why it’s so special – and I trust there will be no attempts to make her winsome, no episodes ending on a freeze-frame of Lee’s face taken over by an irrepressible grin. That’s essential. Apparently, there were attempts to adapt Prep at HBO a decade ago; they never got off the ground. That tells me it wasn’t right, and that this adaptation wouldn’t be going ahead if they hadn’t cracked the formula to tell the story right. The showrunner is Nicole Taylor, most famously of One Day (itself a book we devoured and dissected) and her quote in THR assures me we’re not going to watch a glossy high school show:

“Prep is my all time favorite novel, and I have longed to adapt it for the entire 20 years since I first read it and found myself reflected uncannily back…there is no more acute depiction of the introspective, bookish self-conscious adolescent girl and no more truthful or excoriating take on the perils of social mobility.”

…no more truthful or excoriating take. That is what the book has been and why so many women (people?) talk about it in the same breathless tones Nicole Taylor does above. It does not flinch, and if that’s her guiding light, I am supremely confident in the execution and can’t wait to go on the ride.

I almost think we should do some sort of a book club group read – to see if our reactions now are the same as they were 22 years ago. Who’s in? And – if you’re on the fence, let me just give you one little incentive: the aforementioned Cross Sugarman.

There are a host of excellent names in this book – Darden Pittard, Little Washington, Gates Medkowski – but none is as memorable as Cross Sugarman, object of desire, enigmatic cipher, he who first introduced us to “Fish or Cheese” (no link, you’re going to have to find out for yourself.) In my memory, back in 2005, when Lainey and I were fantasy-casting – or maybe it was even a more official outlet? – we talked about Cross being played by Wentworth Miller. Even then, he would have been a stretch, age-wise, but now? I cannot wait to meet the unknowns who will embody Lee and Cross and Aspeth and everyone else who still haunts the halls of Ault. If you have pitches, let me know and let’s debate them for the year-plus until this show drops… because trust me. If you’ve read the book, you’ll be digging out your copy by tonight. If you haven’t… well, I can’t wait to discover you discovering Prep.

Photo credits: Random House