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Coll, Susan.
Adult Fiction COLL
From Publishers' Weekly:
Coll (karlmarx.com; Rockville Pike) sends up college admissions in an overstuffed social comedy. The novel tracks three juniors-going-on-seniors as they and their families run the gauntlet of SATs, admissions essays, campus tours and rejection letters. It begins with AP Harry (named for the large number of advanced placement courses he takes) and his mother visiting Yates College, a ramshackle school enjoying popularity after U.S. News & World Report erroneously put it on its list of top schools. Also on campus are Harry's classmates Maya Kaluantharana, who'd rather swim laps than prowl library stacks, and Taylor Rockefeller, whose sole criterion for a college is having a private bathroom in her dorm room. As the months tick by and the students wait for acceptance letters, the book meanders through career maneuvering and faculty bed-hopping at Yates, a lawsuit brought against Yates, Harry's obsession with Harvard and Taylor's mother realizing the cause of her daughter's ambivalence toward college. The narrative is heavily peppered with contemporary miscellany (Hurricane Katrina, echoes of the Larry Summers controversy, Facebook, disputes about the SAT's importance), though the mentions often seem like afterthoughts. The surfeit of characters and narrative side trips creates a few pacing logjams, but Coll's deadpan wit and sympathy for her characters are more than redeeming. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
Like Jane Smiley's Moo, this latest from Coll (Rockville Pike) is a hilarious novel about academe, following three high school students, their parents, and one dean of admissions in the year before the students' graduation. All three students are looking for the right college: Harry is driven but struggling to get into Harvard, Taylor becomes obsessed with stealing her neighbors' mail as she resists her mother's schemes to get her into a top school, and Maya tries to convince her family to let her go to a small liberal arts school even though all her siblings went the Ivy League route. Olivia, the interim dean of admissions at Yates College, which has just made the top 50 list of liberal arts colleges, works to maintain her admissions standards while under pressure from the college president to admit kids with wealthy parents. This extremely engaging story about the high-stakes, upper-middle-class world of college admissions is poised to become a popular book club selection and is recommended for most libraries.-Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Lib., Lexington Park, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Coll, Susan.
Adult Fiction COLL
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From Publishers' Weekly:
Coll (karlmarx.com; Rockville Pike) sends up college admissions in an overstuffed social comedy. The novel tracks three juniors-going-on-seniors as they and their families run the gauntlet of SATs, admissions essays, campus tours and rejection letters. It begins with AP Harry (named for the large number of advanced placement courses he takes) and his mother visiting Yates College, a ramshackle school enjoying popularity after U.S. News & World Report erroneously put it on its list of top schools. Also on campus are Harry's classmates Maya Kaluantharana, who'd rather swim laps than prowl library stacks, and Taylor Rockefeller, whose sole criterion for a college is having a private bathroom in her dorm room. As the months tick by and the students wait for acceptance letters, the book meanders through career maneuvering and faculty bed-hopping at Yates, a lawsuit brought against Yates, Harry's obsession with Harvard and Taylor's mother realizing the cause of her daughter's ambivalence toward college. The narrative is heavily peppered with contemporary miscellany (Hurricane Katrina, echoes of the Larry Summers controversy, Facebook, disputes about the SAT's importance), though the mentions often seem like afterthoughts. The surfeit of characters and narrative side trips creates a few pacing logjams, but Coll's deadpan wit and sympathy for her characters are more than redeeming. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
From Library Journal:
Like Jane Smiley's Moo, this latest from Coll (Rockville Pike) is a hilarious novel about academe, following three high school students, their parents, and one dean of admissions in the year before the students' graduation. All three students are looking for the right college: Harry is driven but struggling to get into Harvard, Taylor becomes obsessed with stealing her neighbors' mail as she resists her mother's schemes to get her into a top school, and Maya tries to convince her family to let her go to a small liberal arts school even though all her siblings went the Ivy League route. Olivia, the interim dean of admissions at Yates College, which has just made the top 50 list of liberal arts colleges, works to maintain her admissions standards while under pressure from the college president to admit kids with wealthy parents. This extremely engaging story about the high-stakes, upper-middle-class world of college admissions is poised to become a popular book club selection and is recommended for most libraries.-Amy Ford, St. Mary's Cty. Lib., Lexington Park, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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