It's Not As If She Couldn't See It Coming

My first entry in my new book review blog, Beatrix, was about initial reactions to Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, especially about the degree to which certain reviewers seemed to take it for granted that the author was telling tales out of school, as it were, by repackaging her own adolescence as fiction. Now, Sittenfeld responds to the reactions as Felicia R. Lee (NYT) takes notes:

"'In a way it's flattering that it seems so real,' Ms. Sittenfeld said, adding that at Groton she was less an outsider than is Lee at the fictional Ault School, with more friends and more of an identity through writing. 'But is it so easy to believe that I have no imagination and I can't invent dialogue or those scenarios?'"