Admissions
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
This sharply observed and bitingly funny novel exposes the over-the-top absurdity of New York City`s elite private school admissions circus. For Manhattan's most affluent parents, the Tuesday after Labor Day marks the beginning of the city's most competitive and vicious blood sport: the start of the private school admissions process. But for Helen Drager, mother of Zoe, it shouldn't be such an ordeal. After all, Helen's best friend Sara is an admissions officer at Zoe's current K-8. But Sara's position becomes precarious, and Helen soon finds herself drawn ever deeper into the mounting lunacy generated by the fierce competition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The Tuesday after Labor Day marked the official start of admissions season, the Manhattan parents' version of a blood sport." Readers in the know will groan in recognition at Lieberman's opening and the antics that follow. Even decent, psychoanalyzed, liberal folks such as Helen and Michael Drager are provoked into ludicrous, self-absorbed behavior. Unlike the more viciously cartooned narcissistic parents, they genuinely want what's best for Zoe, who's applying to high schools. But that doesn't stop them from running amok. Helen goads Michael, a producer on the Cooking Network, into offering a show to the ghastly admissions director of the Fancy Girls' School, then almost goes too far with Phillip Cashin, a handsome widowed father she meets on the admissions circuit. Only Zoe keeps her head, falling in love with a fellow musician, Max, and actually considering a defection to (gasp) public school. Debut novelist Lieberman's writing is a little giddy on the big dose of venom she pours. The author peoples her world with a blur of hyphenated, latte-swigging, multicultural, gender-blending parents and megalomaniacal school administrators. Whole scenes are setups for puns: "Kid pro quo"; "nocturnal admissions." But any New York parent contemplating a move to the suburbs will find this novel fabulous ammunition. And readers everywhere else will be gratified by the wild ending, a fund-raising cruise all too aptly titled "A Night to Remember."
