POSH
A Novel
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Set in the private school world of Manhattan's Upper East Side, POSH tracks the lives of a group of teenagers and the adults who hope to control them. It's a world of over-the-top entitlement and tribal customs, a world of surface interactions and deep needs—a world of private schools and privilege.
Griffin is a preparatory school on Manhattan's Upper East Side with the best students—and the richest parent body—the city has to offer. In this eloquent novel set during one class's senior year at the Griffin School, among the queen bees and the wannabes, Michael Avery and Julianne Coopersmith begin a relationship. Their backgrounds are so different—he's beyond privileged and rich, her mother is a writer who drives a cab—but it's the rich boy who ends up being the needy one, with an emotional hole they both believe only Julianne can fill. Their parents are not immune from internal torture either—Michael's mother finds it easier to love her Chinese Crested Hairless than her own child, and Julianne's mother's protective instincts have unexpected consequences.
Fast-paced, gently satirical, yet deeply felt, POSH is a surprisingly poignant and knowing novel distinguished by its spare and elegant prose.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The pseudonymous Jackson (an "acclaimed short story writer and novelist") plumbs the lives of those who pace the halls at New York City's exclusive Griffin School in this accomplished novel. Varied in age and income bracket, the cast is finely drawn if familiar: Julianne Coopersmith, a middle-class teen with an overprotective mother, attends Griffin on scholarship; Morgan Goldfine, Julianne's best friend whose mother recently died, is awash in grief; Michael Avery, Julianne's boy wonder boyfriend, is Harvard bound; and Kathryn "Lazy" Hoffman, Griffin's headmistress, is having a professionally verboten affair with a teacher. Cracks form in Julianne and Michael's relationship after Michael shows signs of mental instability, though Julianne's loathe to give up on him, even when his symptoms hint at violent tendencies. Morgan mopes her way through the school year, and Julianne's mother strikes up an unlikely friendship with Michael's mother. Kathryn's affair, predictably, becomes public knowledge, sparking domestic and professional upheaval. If the plot packs few surprises, Jackson's rendering of relationships both toxic and positive, filial and friendly is flawlessly executed as she flits from social strata to social strata. The similarity in cover art between this novel and Prep isn't for nothing.
