Curtis Sittenfeld

Curtis Sittenfeld
Born	Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld (1975-08-23) August 23, 1975 Cincinnati, Ohio, United States
Occupation	Novelist
Language	English
Genre	Fiction

Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld (born 1975) is an American writer. She is author of five novels: Prep, the tale of a Massachusetts prep school; The Man of My Dreams, a coming-of-age novel and an examination of romantic love; American Wife, a fictional story loosely based on the life of First Lady Laura Bush; Sisterland, which tells the story of identical twins with psychic powers, as well as a number of short stories.

Background and education

Sittenfeld was born August 23, 1975, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second of four children (three girls and a boy). Her mother, Elizabeth "Betsy" Curtis (Bascom), is an art history teacher and librarian at Seven Hills School, a private school in Cincinnati, and her father, Paul George Sittenfeld, is an investment adviser. Her brother, P.G., is a member of the Cincinnati City Council. She is of "half-Catholic, half-Jewish" background.

She attended Seven Hills School through the eighth grade, then attended high school at Groton School, a boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1993. In 1992, the summer before her senior year, she won Seventeen magazine's fiction contest.

She attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York before transferring to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. At Stanford, she studied creative writing, wrote articles for the college newspaper, and edited that paper's weekly arts magazine. At the time, she was also chosen as one of Glamour magazine's College Women of the Year. She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.

Novels

Prep

Her first novel, Prep, which took her three years to write, was published in 2005 and concerns a girl, Lee Fiora, from South Bend, Indiana, who goes to Ault School, an elite boarding school near Boston, Massachusetts. Some think Ault is a thinly veiled Groton School, but others say it is based on the two years Sittenfeld spent teaching at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. The plot deals with coming of age, self-identity, and class distinctions in the preppy and competitive atmosphere.

Reviews of Prep were mixed, with views ranging from highly laudatory to those who said that it was a well-written but weakly plotted story that was buoyed by strong detail and narration. Some saluted the book for its verisimilitude, including Elissa Schappell, who wrote in the New York Times Review of Books: "Sittenfeld's dialogue is so convincing that one wonders if she didn't wear a wire under her hockey kilt." The New York Times named Prep one of their top five works of fiction for 2005.

Less positively, a review in Publishers Weekly stated, "The book meanders on its way, light on plot, but saturated with heartbreaking humor and written in clean prose. Sittenfeld . . . proves herself a natural in this poignant, truthful book." Critics have also questioned how much of the story is pure memoir instead of fiction..

Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when she leaves her family behind in Indiana to attend the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. Over the next four years, her experiences at Ault -complicated relationships with teachers,intense friendship with other girls, an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush-coalesce into a singular portrait of the universal pains and thrills of adolescence.

The Man of My Dreams

Sittenfeld's second novel, called The Man of My Dreams, was published in May 2006 by Random House. It follows a girl named Hannah from the end of her 8th grade year through her college years at Tufts and into her late twenties. Both in comparison to Prep and other novels, The Man of My Dreams has gathered mixed reviews with much of the same praise and criticism Prep has garnered.

American Wife

Sittenfeld's third novel, called American Wife (2008), is the tale of Alice Blackwell, a fictional character who shares many similarities with former First Lady Laura Bush. In the novel, Blackwell is an only child who grows up in a Democratic family. As a high school student, Blackwell kills a friend in an auto accident. She also has an illegal abortion and discovers that her grandmother is a secret lesbian. She meets, falls in love with, and marries the wild son of an elite Republican family. Her husband rises in politics to the office of president, and, although Blackwell staunchly disagrees with her husband's politics, she continues to love him.

In November 2011, it was announced that Red Crown Productions had begun work on a film version, with the adaptation be written by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Ron Nyswaner.

Sisterland

Sisterland was published on June 25, 2013. The book's protagonist Kate is an identical twin with psychic powers.

Eligible

Eligible was published on April 19, 2016 by Random House. It is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in Cincinnati, Ohio. The protagonist, Liz, is one of five sisters who have perplexed their mother by not marrying. When Liz's father, Mr. Bennet, falls ill, Liz and her older sister, Jane, return to Cincinnati to help their mother and father for the summer. Mrs. Bennet, a country-club going social climber, takes the opportunity to play match-maker for her daughters. Throughout the time at home, Liz, Jane, and her three other sisters illustrate the joys and struggles of love, romance, duty, and family.

Further reading

• 'Show Don't Tell' a short story by Sittenfeld, published in The New Yorker, June 2017.
• 'The Wonder Spot': Sophie's Choices review by Curtis Sittenfeld for the New York Times
• Sittenfeld discusses her work on All Things Considered
• The Man of My Dreams Reviews at Metacritic
• Elaine Bender. Review of Prep. Library Journal. v. 129, n. 20. December 15, 2004. 103.
• Jesse Berrett. "The dreams and dreads of the teenage years". The San Francisco Chronicle. January 23, 2005.
• Tiffany Blackstone and Daryl Chen. "Too true novels". Glamour. v. 103, n. 1. January 2005. 87.
• Michael Carr. Review of Prep. Booklist. v. 101, n. 8. December 15, 2004. 709.
• Eleni Gage. "It Prepares You for Life, But What Prepares You for Prep School?". The New York Sun. January 19, 2005.
• Caitlin Macy. "School Ties". The Washington Post. January 23, 2005. T7.
• Review of Prep. The New Yorker. February 7, 2005.
• Review of Prep. Publishers Weekly. v. 251, n. 44. November 1, 2004. 41.
• Daniel Asa Rose. "Gimlet Eyed Girl Grows Up". New York Observer. January 17, 2005. 9.
• Elissa Schappell. "Class Act". The New York Times Book Review January 16, 2005.
• Steven Weinberg. "Superb writing is the edge for coming of age novel". The Plain Dealer. January 23, 2005. J10.
• Rory Evans. "Cincinnati Kid: Curtis Sittenfeld". Cincinnati Magazine. January 2005. 66+.
• Felicia R. Lee. "Although She Wrote What She Knew, She Says She Isn't What She Wrote". New York Times. January 26, 2005. B3.
• Sara Pearce. "'Prep' author visits hometown to chat". The Cincinnati Enquirer. February 15, 2005. E1.
• Curtis Sittenfeld. "You Can't Get a Man With a Pen". The New York Times Book Review. December 19, 2004. 35.

External links

• Official website