Petey's Fiction Review

I am Charlotte Simmons

by Tom Wolfe

When Charlotte Simmons earns a full scholarship to DuPont University, a prestigious Pennsylvania college, the intelligent, pretty, naive (and puritanical) class valedictorian trades the world she's always known for a world she can't begin to imagine.

Raised in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Charlotte Simmons becomes a stranger in a strange land when she shares a room, in a campus coed dorm, with a girl from an upper crust New England family. To Charlotte's chagrin, the girl prefers booze and late-night parties to academic pursuits.

Snubbed by her roommate and other popular girls on campus, Charlotte, hungry for friends, in need of acceptance and anxious to please, is at once enamored of the attentions of popular campus jock Hoyt Thorpe, pursued by campus brainiac Adam Gellin and courted by star basketball player Jo Jo Johanssen.

The aftermath of abandoning her deeply ingrained values in a bid for popularity throws Charlotte into deep depression and her exemplary academic performance slides into the pit of mediocrity. As she struggles to restore her academic standing and her damaged reputation, she learns that her true worth and center of power arise not from abandonment of her core values, but from being the person she's always been—Charlotte Simmons.

From the shallow and superficial to the deep and deeply complex, each of the main characters in I am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe's fictional account of modern college life, discovers that lessons learned through life experiences are just as important—and as valuable—as lessons learned in the classroom. For better or for worse, each learns that not all things are as they seem to be, and that nothing is permanent.

Tom Wolfe, former news reporter and author of I am Charlotte Simmons, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Bonfire of the Vanities, and other works of fiction and non-fiction, was educated at Washington and Lee and Yale universities.

Visit Tom's Web site at www.tomwolfe.com/

Review by Phil Hanson

Click on the cover image to order your copy of I am Charlotte Simmons.

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