Posh

by Lucy Jackson and Lucy Jackson

Book Overview

Inside Manhattan's private school world of fast-paced over-the-top entitlement and superficial gloss lurk many secrets--the secrets of emotionally charged teenage and adult lives. 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312377983
• ISBN13: 9780312377984
• Release Date: December 2007
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

devils and angels wear Prada

The mysterious and unknowable Lucy Jackson penetrates the gilded precincts of New York's educational and domestic inner sanctums, where, it turns out, devils and angels both wear Prada. She exposes the dark underside of the glitz and simultaneously infuses the comedies and tragedies of this world with spice, acuity, wit, depth, authenticity and--rare perhaps for a novel featuring teens in jeans--heart. Snorting and fornicating, designer fashion and money talk ornament the scene, and all of this undergoes scrutiny, for better and for worse, by Jackson's discerning, perceptive and all-seeing eye and practiced pen. The moneyed and the celebrated line the corridors and shove their kids, smart and not so smart, deserving and less so, wallet first, into the Ivy League. Maternal-filial connections of all descriptions, loving and less so, are put under the microscope. Jackson captures with precision the intonations and peculiar music of the lingo of privileged, blasé kids at the Griffin School. She takes a good long and clear look at what's going on in class and outside of it, and rewards the reader with serious observations and a somewhat tongue-in-cheek eye for the human comedy. But she never loses sight of humane values--note the mom-cabbie-writer who exerts strong gravitational pull at the book's core--and of the things that matter. Love in its various guises survives, even when it is subjected to the rigors and assaults of an uncaring and sometimes harsh material world. A posh piece of prose.

fast, yet incredibly moving read

I finished Posh a few weeks ago but find myself still thinking about the characters in this novel. This book follows the story of various students, parents and the headmistress of an elite private school in Manhattan. I initially thought this would be a fun piece of fluff, but the issues of death and mental illness explored in this story quickly disavowed me of that notion! It took me a little while to get used to one of the main characters being known as "Lazy", but once I did, I devoured this book and would love to know what other books Lucy Jackson (a pseudonym) has written.

staying power

This novel strikes a beautiful balance between serious and comic, commercial and literary. A complex tale simply told, it centers particularly on the headmistress of Griffin, a (posh) private school in Manhattan and two students, Julianne and Michael, young lovers whose relationship spirals out of control when symptoms of Michael's mental illness become increasingly bizarre. His dark and agitated state of mind is convincingly rendered and all the characters, including Julianna's concerned but sometimes helpless mother, earn the reader's investment and concern for their fate.

GOBBLED IT DOWN IN A SINGLE, GREEDY SITTING

A sharp, smart, bittersweet chocolate bar of a novel. Jackson's take on the elite, private school world of Upper East Side Manhattan is wholly her own. I could not put it down until I had read--and savored--every last page, and then I had to go back and re-read certain sections again. Funny, yet serious, moving yet sly, POSH is the work an accomplished writer at the height of her powers.

witty and penetrating

I was quite drawn to this for several reasons, the most intriguing of which was that the author, a respected and lauded literary novelist (who has published in the New Yorker), had decided to bring this out under a pseudonym. Also, the cover art was quite fetching. I started reading in the bookstore, was hooked immediately and decided to buy it for a Valentine's gift -- which I still plan on giving -- but couldn't help finishing the book before I wrapped it. Only an enormously talented literary writer could tred so delicately between wit, humor, irony and poignancy. This book is obviously meant to be a satire, but there are so many moments in which the reader is gripped and moved. The world of the Upper Eastside private school is somewhat familiar to me; however, I believe Jackson gives it a fresh spin. Beyond this, beneath this satire is a cautionary tale that is very current insofar as it can be related to all the newspaper stories that we've read recently about how some parents will do anything to get their children into the right college. All of this is juxtaposed with hilarious set pieces about life at private school. And Jackson has a great feel for the one-liner. She gets off plenty of zingers. I love how at the center of the novel a frustrated novelist forced to work as a cab driver is, along with her daughter, trying to negotiate a private school world populated by people who are so much richer than she is. You feel for her as you do her daughter. Invariably this book will be compared to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep. They are two very different books. While Sittenfeld's book is fresh and full of first novel brio, it is very much a first novel, soft in places, not fuly formed, jejeune. However, it's clear when you're reading Jackson that this woman is an accomplished pro. She has complete and effortless command of her narrative and her characters. Her dialogue crackles with wit. I gobbled up this book. Now I can't help wondering who Jackson might be.