The Plot of Time: A Guest Post by Curtis Sittenfeld
A sharp collection of musings on middle-age, life, love and regret, Show Don’t Tell is a funny and intimate exploration of domestic discontent from the author of Prep and Romantic Comedy. Read on for an exclusive essay from Curtis Sittenfeld on writing her brand-new collection.
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Show Don't Tell: Stories
Show Don't Tell: Stories
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Hardcover
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$28.00
A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy
A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic Comedy
Years ago, a woman who graduated from the same boarding school I did, Groton, told me she wanted people who knew her to read my 2005 first novel Prep so they could understand her better. A few years later, two undergraduates at an elite East Coast university who’d also attended Groton approached me after I’d participated in an event on their college campus and told me it bothered them that the protagonist of Prep, Lee, is so negative because readers might not understand that her problem is her; they might think her problem is our real alma mater. Many readers have told me they desperately wanted to go to boarding school but their parents wouldn’t let them, and many have told me they identified with Prep even though they didn’t go to boarding school, because when they went away to college, they were unprepared in just the ways Lee is for the sophistication of their classmates. People who did go to boarding school have often asked if I based Ault on their school specifically, because their school also painted the names of senior prefects on the dining hall wall or sang a certain hymn or played Assassin. Some readers have told me they felt so frustrated by Lee and her self-sabotaging that they wanted to jump inside the book and shake her shoulders; others have told me that they identified deeply with Lee and her self-sabotaging (and her overthinking and her endless insecurity) but that prior to reading Prep, they had always thought they were the only person who felt the ways they do.
It’s a privilege to get a novel published, and it’s a privilege of a different magnitude when readers connect profoundly with it—even, weirdly, when some of them hate it. All of which is to say how could I not revisit Lee at some point? For my newest book, a story collection called Show Don’t Tell, I wrote a Prep sequel story featuring Lee at two points in time. In one plotline, Lee tells a boarding school story she’s kept secret all these years, an encounter she had as a student during a reunion weekend on campus; in the second timeline, she’s in her late forties and returning to her own thirtieth boarding school reunion. I myself am now 49, and I’ve joked that returning to Lee’s voice felt as comfortable as pulling on a Patagonia fleece jacket from 1989.
Several other stories in Show Don’t Tell feature protagonists who are young women—in college or right after—then skip decades ahead into middle age. I’m endlessly fascinated by the plot of time and by how our perspective on certain events or people changes as we change, though the past events remain the same. I’m also fascinated by the relationships that define us—friendship, marriage, parenthood—and these themes run throughout all the stories.
Over the years, many readers have asked me how Lee from Prep turned out in adulthood. Did she remain neurotic and self-sabotaging? Did she find a happy ending? Did she find love? I hope that Show Don’t Tell answers these questions.