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Acceptance: A Novel
Acceptance: A Novel
Acceptance: A Novel
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Acceptance: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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A comic chronicle of a year in the life in the college admissions cycle.

It's spring break of junior year and the college admissions hysteria is setting in. "AP" Harry (so named for the unprecedented number of advanced placement courses he has taken) and his mother take a detour from his first choice, Harvard, to visit Yates, a liberal arts school in the Northeast that is enjoying a surge in popularity as a result of a statistical error that landed it on the top-fifty list of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. There, on Yates's dilapidated grounds, Harry runs into two of his classmates from Verona High, an elite public school in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. There's Maya Kaluantharana, a gifted athlete whose mediocre SAT scores so alarm her family that they declare her learning disabled, and Taylor Rockefeller, Harry's brooding neighbor, who just wants a good look at the dormitory bathrooms.

With the human spirit of Tom Perrotta and the engaging honesty of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, Susan Coll reveals the frantic world of college admissions, where kids recalibrate their GPAs based on daily quizzes, families relocate to enhance the chance for Ivy League slots, and everyone is looking for the formula for admittance. Meanwhile, Yates admissions officer Olivia Sheraton sifts through applications looking for something-anything-to distinguish one applicant from the next. For all, the price of admission requires compromise; for a few, the ordeal blossoms into an unexpected journey of discovery.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateMar 4, 2008
ISBN9781429933582
Acceptance: A Novel
Author

Susan Coll

Susan Coll is the author of six novels, including The Stager--a New York Times and Chicago Tribune Editor's Choice. Her third novel, Acceptance, was made into a television movie starring the hilarious Joan Cusack. Susan's work has appeared in publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, Washingtonian magazine, Moment Magazine, NPR.org, Atlantic.com, and The Millions. She works at an independent bookstore in Washington, DC, and is currently the president of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Visit Susan online at susancoll.com; Instagram: @susan_keselenko_coll; Twitter: @Susan_Coll; Pinterest: @susancollauthor.

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Reviews for Acceptance

Rating: 3.5900954343675417 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Those looking for tidy conclusions or meaningful revelations as to the setting, look elsewhere. Each of these books asks the same questions or sets of questions, examines them from different perspectives, and in the absence of external facts, simply moves the goalposts further out, mirroring the existential human experience and our part in it as we explore the space we find ourselves in.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Jeff VanderMeer's final book in the Southern Reach Trilogy feels just as different from the first two books as the second book did from the first. As one would hope, "Acceptance" gives us some explanations behind the mysteries described in the first two books. But having read these explanations, I came away thinking they only look like explanations. I know a little more than I did before, but not nearly enough.

    "Acceptance" was neither surprising nor scary nor completely satisfying. Unlike the first two books, "Acceptance" is heavy with multiple points-of-view. Characters from the previous books appear in both flashbacks and contemporary circumstances. We learn a number of different things about how Area X came to be, and the conspiracies it generated, and how secrets contained secrets like so many nesting Russian dolls. But there is much we don't learn as well.

    The story of the TV show "LOST" comes to mind. By the end of the final season, we knew the puzzle pieces fit together, even if we couldn't quite visualize the cover on the puzzle box. The ending of "LOST" brought the story to a conclusion, however susceptible it may have been to different interpretations. (And admittedly, more than a few viewers were left frustrated.)

    The ending of the Southern Reach Trilogy, however, seems to wander, as if the book itself were mirroring the minds of the people in the story, like the lighthouse keeper as he endures transformation. It makes me wonder if the author himself entered (and returned?) from Area X. In the end, the bits and pieces don't fit together. Rather than puzzle pieces in a box, they seem like a collection of artifacts in a cabinet of curiosities.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4,4 stars

    this is a series i'm sure i'll re-read some day, and i'll take my time with it properly. this is also a series i have a really hard time describing or reviewing, so i'm just going to leave it at "i loved it, and i finished reading it while crying and not really knowing why i was doing so."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I've never been more confused nor more in love. The writing in this book is gorgeous and challenging. Fantastic end to an amazing trilogy.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    True horror is extremely difficult to come across these days. Thanks to CG in movies, horror has devolved into a cartoonish mess. (Most) Writers, meanwhile, focus on the grotesque, leaving little to the imagination. VanderMeer skips all that, building horror out of being present in a place rather than what really inhabits it. Sadly, it’s mired in pacing issues with the boring parts outnumbering the exciting ones.

    Annihilation’s beginning is atrociously slow, leaving the reader in total mystery. It isn’t until the second act that the horror truly unfolds through slow, sweet build-up. There’s palpable tension between the characters, though most of them are utterly forgettable. It’s the Psychologist and the Biologist who really shine through. Unfortunately, even their characterizations feel ponderous and heavy, with the author often spending huge chunks of text on their feelings that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things.

    Area X is a character unto itself, and boy oh boy, it shines more than the others. Beautiful and innocuous on the outside, but holds deep, dark secrets on the inside that are terrifying for human minds to fully comprehend. It’s host to both innocent and monstrous creatures who can be heard deep in the night. It’s also host to the Tower, which is a mystery unto itself.

    The second book in the trilogy, Authority, focuses on Southern Reach, the enigmatic organization behind the expeditions. Not only is it very different from the first, it’s also much slower and even more ponderous, which I thought was impossible. We’re introduced to Control, who I felt was sloppy and had massive mommy issues. He almost reminded me of Archer, but not in a good way. The book mostly deals with office politics, showing how inept the organization truly is. It was refreshing to see mysterious behind-the-scenes organizations to be investigated, but damn, I wasn’t expecting this…

    The book is slow as molasses and hosts only a few moments of true terror. Writing about any of them would be spoilers, so go ahead and read the book. Sadly, you’ll have to deal with a lot of unpleasantness before you can get to these fantastic scenes.

    Acceptance, the final book in the trilogy, is easily much better. Much better pacing and characterization await. So does Area X in all its glory. The mystery unfolds and reveals its guts to only leave you asking for more. However, it doesn’t really expand much on the lore built in the last two books. It’s content staying where it is, instead raising even more questions that won’t be answered.

    Most people compare the Southern Reach trilogy with Lovecraftian horror. See, the thing about horror isn’t really fear or anxiety, but a terrible dislike or repugnance towards something. There’s only one thing that was truly scary in these three books, and that too was revealed to be pathetic in a later act. Yes, the series doesn’t really have anything horrifying, or at least I didn’t feel that way, it does capture a sense of terribleness towards Area X and its denizens, especially those revealed in the last book. You feel disgusted by the organism and how it works, not truly terrified by its powers. Like Lovecraft, VanderMeer captures the essence of cosmic horror quite well, showing off how alien aliens can be. But sadly, like Lovecraft, his creations are dragged down by pacing and language.

    Overall, if you’re feeling patient and up for a somewhat slow walk through nature, I recommend this trilogy. If you’re looking for fast action, skip.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    So that's it? That's all we get?

    I wish I had known. I wouldn't have wasted my time.

    With this frustrating final book in the trilogy, I alternated between anger (because VanderMeer continued to stuff the pages with useless, time-wasting back stories), and annoyance (because the story wasn't going anywhere for the most part), with frequent side-trips into unadulterated boredom. There were large swaths of narrative that my eyes slid over but my brain couldn't get the gumption up to care about.

    I'm entirely sick of novels that are trumpeted as the next evolution in horror, or the logical offspring to this author or that author...novels where the author has some talent (and VanderMeer does, when he tries), and some imagination (as VanderMeer also does), but, through the course of the story, not only does NOT bring it home, but steadfastly refuses to, instead choosing to deepen the mystery instead of attempting to clear the cobwebs.

    Let me be clear: When you finish this novel, you will have gained very few answers to all the questions set up in the first two novels. But you will be treated to pages and pages and pages and pages of backstory, of telling versus showing, of annoying second-person point of view, and not much else.

    I'm actually a fairly willing reader. I understand that there's times when an author wants to scatter clues and let the reader figure some stuff out. I'm a fan of that. It makes the reader feel like they're part of the story. But when you drop a single, ambiguous clue about once every hundred pages? No.

    If you want to be left scratching your head, knowing far more about the characters than is needed, and knowing far less about the mysteries of Area X than you wanted, go ahead, read the books. But if you want a satisfying conclusion to a story, seriously, go read something else. This is not the trilogy you're looking for.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I really love your story, it deserves a lot of audience. I want you to know, there is a competition right now until the end of May with a theme Werewolf on the NovelStar app. I hope you can consider joining. You can also publish your stories there. just email our editors hardy@novelstar.top, joye@novelstar.top, or lena@novelstar.top.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Southern Reach, the organization responsible for studying and overseeing the mysterious Area X, is falling apart. In his time since taking over the outpost, Control has stumbled across more than a handful of secrets within the organization but is nowhere near close to understanding Area X and what makes it tick. The conspiracies run deep and the paranoia is starting to run even deeper. There's only one option let: to go into Area X and find out what lies on the far island not visited by any previous expeditions. There's no guarantee the answers lie there, but it's the only shot left.

    What a climactic conclusion to a trilogy. Things have built to quite a head here, leaving the characters and readers not really knowing where to turn or how to find the answers that they seek. And VanderMeer isn't just going to hand those answers over, either. Be prepared to have assumptions challenged and to go on not really knowing the answers to all of the questions you might have. If you want everything wrapped up in a nice little bow, you'll probably be disappointed. But if that's not a requirement for you as a reader, you will be in for quite a treat.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I don't like loose ends and unexplained stuff. Ultimately, you are left with no answers as to what this was all about.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a strong conclusion to the series. I definitely had questions, but I appreciated the symmetry of the narrative. I liked reading all three books fairly close together, as this kept the narrative fresh in my mind. It was smart of VanderMeer to change up his narrative style for each book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a satisfying conclusion the Southern Reach Trilogy. The novel is told from the perspective of four characters, The Lighthouse Keeper, The Director, Ghost Bird, and Control. The Lighthouse Keeper’s story is about the very beginning of the strange phenomena known as Area X. The Director of the Southern Reach research facility has a connection to Area X and the Lighthouse Keeper that makes her job personal. Ghost Bird is a double of the Biologist from the twelfth expedition and understands Area X better than anyone. Control is a pawn who has been used by others throughout his life and is drawn to helping Ghost Bird. The Southern Reach series is like one long novel that has been broken into three books. The first book gives you a glimpse of Area X. The second story is about the people researching Area X. The last book gives you more of an idea of how Area X came into being, but keeps it mysterious, as everything truly alien should be.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    So I finally finished this book after reading the first two in the trilogy.Perhaps I just don't have the appreciation for fiction yet or perhaps the story just wasn't right for me but I can't say I feel very satisfied in the end. This book was definitely better than the second but did drag on a bit. I will say that it wasn't unpleasant to read the writing style was enjoyable and there was a good pace with this book. It's more of a dissatisfactory ending that kinda ruined it for me.Overall, if you made it through the second book and weren't too upset. Why not finish off with this one. But don't feel like you're missing out on too much if you only read the first one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A chorus of voices bring the Southern Reach trilogy to its close: The Director, The Lighthouse Keeper, Ghost Bird, and Control. Through the voice of the Director, or rather the former Director, we gain a glimpse into both what came before Area X and the efforts to engage with it up to the present. The Director is tied to The Lighthouse Keeper, Saul. When she was young girl named Gloria, she played on the rocks by the lighthouse and became a friend of its keeper, Saul. Saul unwittingly becomes the conduit through which Area X enters the world and ravishes all that it encounters, even though it may then reproduce those objects with an unsettling mimicry. Gloria, luckily, is absent from the forgotten coast when the cataclysm begins. But her lifelong mission is to return to the coast and to her friend, Saul, even if that means disguising herself as “Cynthia” and working tirelessly to become the Director of the Southern Reach facility studying the phenomenon known as Area X. Ghost Bird is not the biologist, as she clearly states from the outset. But she also clearly is based on the biologist. And perhaps only Control fully takes her side and works to help her fulfil her own mission, whatever that might be.It’s a complicated fugue of narrative lines. But it moves inexorably towards a kind of epiphany. Or maybe that’s just a realization that the world is as it is. I don’t know. There was a lot in there about quantum worlds interacting, distant stars, and stuff. It sounded good at the time. But does it ultimately hold together? I’ll leave that up to you. In any case, I thought this was a compelling, if not fully satisfying, read. And I’d gladly read more by Jeff Vandermeer.Recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Thirty years or so ago, something known only as "The Event" created Area X. A boundary dropped around a section of Florida's Panhandle region known as "the Forgotten Coast," sealing it off from the rest of the world.The Southern Reach, a scientific-cum-clandestine government organization, finds a "door" into Area X, and begins sending expeditions into the Area. Those who come back - and most do not - come back _changed_.The third book, _Acceptance_, begins shortly after the cataclysmic event that is _Authority_'s climax. There are four viewpoint characters this time: Ghost Bird, the returned biologist (or is she?); Control; the Lighthouse Keeper; and the Director. Only the first two viewpoints take place in the "present." The Lighthouse Keeper's story leads up to the Event, and the Director's concerns how and why she disappeared before _Authority_. But they conjoin to tell a single story that takes place over years, and that may determine the fate of the world. Or may not.Again! Another style change!! So incredibly good! it fits the themes of change and dopplegangers and overall spookyness. Another chilling dispatch and wonderfully strange conclusion (?) to teh Area X stories. The style here is so different from Annihilation & Authority.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The final book in the Southern Reach Trilogy follows all the main POVs introduced in the previous books. The book goes into more of how the characters feel in relation to Area X, while unlocking some of the mysteries. It is definitely mystifying, but I feel like the 2nd and 3rd book didn't catch the magic of the 1st book. This book jumps around a lot more, from character to character, past to present. Covered a lot of interesting ideas. Not a horror series, but contains horror elements.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this series but I wished the final book gave me more answers. Sometimes I’ll read books again that leave me still needing answers. I feel that this series will be one of them.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The same frustrations I experienced in Authority are seen here; a disjointed story, a narrative style that doesn't match as well as in the 1st book and a pace that is slow as paint drying. The atmosphere is incredible, VanderMeer is very good at invoking a sense of confusion, dread and paranoia. But at this point, I wanted more structure in the plot and instead I got 3 different stories, all happening at different times. With how little answers there already are (which I'm fine with in theory), I felt this was a poor choice. A disappointing conclusion, but I'm glad I read the trilogy overall. The movie is, by far, the best thing to come out of it, and the 1st book (Annihilation) was terrific. I definitely would consider VanderMeer's other books, but for now, relieved that I can move onto something else.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What a ride! I feel like my brain is about to explode, but in the best possible way.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A fantastic end to an unsettling but rewarding trilogy. I'm not sure that I ever really understood what was going on, but this was grounded enough to make it worthwhile. It's a meditation on identity and man's relationship to nature and it's both comforting and highly disturbing. I love these gorgeous editions that I bought and I'm sure this series will haunt me for a while.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Wait.. What? This book was supposed to finish the series but it left me with more questions:
    Did the S&SB really start this all? And HOW? Was Jack and Severance the root of it all? What happened with Control when he went through? Does Grace and Ghostbird make it back? Is Lowerey working for area X? Is the earth still there? Come on!!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I lost momentum in this one compared to the first two in the series - didn't have as much of page-turner feel for me - some of the language, imagery and characterization is not to be missed but you may need to give yourself more time w this one than you predict
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    'Acceptance', the final part of Jeff Vandermeer's 'Southern Reach' trilogy, brings the events of the previous two volumes to a conclusion of sorts; yet there are no clear answers. There are five protagonists; two, Control and Ghost Bird are shown in the present; two more, the Director we encountered in the first volume and Grace, the Deputy Director have their stories related both in flashback and (in the case of Grace) in the present day; and we are shown events from the origin of Area X through the viewpoint of the lighthouse keeper, Saul. The coastal village shown in the lighthouse keeper's flashback sections seems typical of the makeshift communities common to shorelands, the sort of communities where strange things can happen and are a part of the life and lore of the sea.Throughout, there are revelations, but these throw little light on the what and the why of events. The Kafkaesque quotient is maintained; relationships between past and present, here and there emerge and the reader is liable to exclaim "Oh! So THAT'S why...." at various times. Yet there are no definitive answers, or rather no one definitive answer. I increasingly feel that Area X and Central are not located in a geographical location we are familiar with. It feels like coastal America, but there are clues to the geography and they give the wrong answers. Perhaps this is all part of the process of dislocation, of putting the reader off balance. The echoes of other works by other hands remain: Kafka (as I said), Algis Budrys' 'Rogue Moon' and the Strugatsky Brothers' 'Roadside Picnic' spring to mind at different times, as do William Hope Hodgson's uncanny tales of nautical weirdness; and of course his tour de force 'The Night Land'.At the end of the story, we have seen how different individuals have reacted to Area X, and vice versa. The experienced reader would never have expected definitive answers anyway; that much should have been obvious from the first two books. Whilst reading this trilogy, I have been re-watching the surreal 1960s television show 'The Prisoner' (starring Patrick McGoohan), and the more one looks at that, the more obvious it becomes that the answer to that show's central question - "Who is Number One?" - could never have been a villain in an underground lair, or some agency that was plonked down in The Village as a sort of 'Satanas ex machina' to be revealed out of nowhere as the answer to all the questions. Equally, just saying that Area X was a time-slip, or an alien incursion, or an ecological disaster, would be short-changing the reader precisely because a clear-cut answer will not do, will not explain why the various characters reacted as they did. This is not a simple adventure tale with a simple, single answer at the end of it, and any attempt to read it as such will fail. Rather, it is a study of bureaucracies and the people who have to work in them and with them, and how inadequate they may be when faced with the unknown. And so, I suspect it will be necessary to read the whole trilogy a second time to reflect on what we have learnt.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book started out like gang busters. I was completely sucked in and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. But somewhere around the halfway mark it just slowed down and petered out. I don't really understand why it happened - given the way that it is written is naturally geared towards a crescendo as the acceptance letters near - but nevertheless it just went limp for me. It was a fine read - I wouldn't go out of my way to read it though.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Although college is many, many years behind me, when I came across an old review of this book I was enchanted with the character AP Harry. I immediately went to my kindle and purchased Admission (oops). I was several chapters in (and completely engrossed) before the I realized AP Harry would not be making an appearance.Frankly, Admission with its focus on Yale admission officer Portia is the better book. Acceptance is engrossing in many ways, but ultimately fails because it focuses on far too many characters.You have the afore mentioned AP Harry and his concerned mother Grace. Emotional trainwreck Taylor and her pushy mother Nina. Sweet and confused Maya with her unrealistic parents. And Olivia a college admissions officer at Yates a college that all three students briefly visit, but only two apply to (and only one really even cared about).The inclusion of Olivia and the unrealistic straights the university suddenly finds itself in (sued by a native american tribe and suddenly without litigation insurance due to a vacation by a senile lawyer) detracted seriously from the novel.I'm also am not a fan of "cutting" as the new teenage angst and whenever I see it am reminded of painfully bad fanfiction. I loved however the whole mail thing, more so because my own mail service is unreliable at best.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I guess this was funny... in a completely stressful way. I thought it was interesting to see the college admission process through so many points of view and it made me realize that 1) I'm really glad not to be in high school anymore; 2) while I was worried about where to go to college, there were other people worrying on my behalf; and 3) the cycle continues when you have kids of your own.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Although it got off to a clunky start, I loved this book...it brought me back to the college admissions process (14 or 15 years ago, eek!) which, oddly enough, I thoroughly enjoyed at the time. It makes a great subject for a satire, especially with the growing competitiveness and insanity of the application process. At first, the characters seemed like types (a problem I also had with Tom Perrotta's The Abstinence Teacher, a similar book in style and subject matter), then they became more developed and rounded, and I thought the blurb on the back of the book -- "A satire with heart" -- was true.Characters included Olivia Sheraton (an ice-queen admissions officer who melts a little bit by the end), AP Harry (the miraculously obsessive student bent on getting into Harvard), Maya (the genial and attractive Indian swimmer, probably the most well-adjusted of them all), and Taylor (The Bell Jar-loving, vaguely Goth mail hoarder).

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book itself was fine, a not-so-veiled jab at the wealthier suburbs in Montgomery County, Md. and the college admissions obsession therein. I am curious as to whether the writer read Overachievers (Alexandra Robbins' non-fiction look at Walt Whitman HS in Montgomery County) because some of the similarities are WAY too similar. For example, Robbins talks about AP Frank, a student who has set records for taking AP classes at Whitman and is being pushed towards Harvard. One of Coll's main characters, AP Harry, has set similar records and also years for Harvard. Robbins describes a character whose immigrant mother ultimately physically beats him for not "excelling enough" to the point where he moves in with friends. A minor character does the same thing.A quibble--The kids in Acceptance seemed almost too wholesome to me. Before all of you angels who never got in trouble in high school pipe up saying "But I never . . .," it strikes me as wholly unrealistic that these kids, growing up in the environs they did, would be so innocent and naive, like something out of Pleasantville. The one character who has "major issues" rings false. I think the issue is you never see a side of the kids other than their school obsessions, and anyone who has been through the admissions process knows that life doesn't stop when you're applying for college (Robbins did a great job pointing this out, actually), but that it's one more thing to balance.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I've been putting off reading the final volume in this series for a while, and I was hoping that seeing the movie adaptation of the first book would jumpstart my desire to finish this trilogy. Alas, I found the movie to be a dull mess. It took someone putting a hold on my library copy to finally make me power through Acceptance. Or suffer through, rather.

    As with the second book, I found my biggest obstacle to finishing was be the immediate and unstoppable need to fall asleep whenever I read the book while sitting or lying down. I usually have problems napping in the afternoon, but Acceptance worked wonders there.

    Having sidelined the biologist and her 2.0 version in much of the second novel, I was hoping the author would bring her back in force for the conclusion. But, no, two thirds of the book are two different flashback sequences filling in the past of the psychologist when she was a child and when she was running the Southern Reach before the 12th expedition. Boring as dirt, the both of them.

    And the present day sequences are filled with nothing but pointless meandering. The looming dread of the first volume is gone. The mythology has no payoff, tied up with a whimper after the explosive bang that ended the second volume. I invoked the TV series Lost when I reviewed volume one. Unfortunately, this book ends as poorly as that series.

    Huge disappointment.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The only reason this is getting 4 stars instead of 5 is that I prefer an ending where (almost) everything is wrapped up and I understand (most) of what happened and what I just read. This is definitely not the case with this last book in the Southern Reach trilogy. What follows is a review of the entire trilogy. You can read my other reviews on ouroborosfreelance.com

    The Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer is beautifully written. And, well, weird.

    I very rarely buy books at full retail price anymore. But after multiple recommendations from people I trust, I decided to buy Annihilation and give it a try. (Plus, those covers - hard to resist!)



    Annihilation follows a group of “explorers” as they go into an area in the southern United States called Area X. No one knows what Area X is exactly, even though it has been part of the landscape for over 30 years. Sometimes people come back from their expeditions, sometimes not. There’s a lighthouse, lots of suspicious behavior and loads of crazy developments. The book could be read as a stand alone, but there is also a cliff-hanger, so...

    Immediately upon finishing Annihilation, I bought Authority and then Acceptance. Full price, at my local bookstore. Each book is written in a different style and from different character points of view. I can only say that reading these books is like an intense and beautiful fever dream. (I know I’m not giving you much of an idea about plot, but I’m not sure I could do it justice or that I fully understand what happened yet. So unhelpful.)

    If you enjoy experimental fiction, alternate realities, strange events, science fiction, mysteries, really excellent writing, conspiracy theories, monsters and/or unexplained phenomena, and if you are totally okay with stories with no definitive ending or an absolute explanation of what has happened, you will enjoy this trilogy! And even if you don’t currently like these things, you should still try this out - just for fun!

    When you are done, you can go join the conversation online about what really happened and what you actually read. Also, look for the movie when it is released later this year.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I enjoyed the first two books in this series a LOT more than this one. At first, I appreciated the fact that this book was sort of tying up loose ends.... but it took SO FREAKING LONG to do it!!! It just went on and on, and I found myself, about 1/2 way through, wishing it was done already. I think there were parts, too, that got a little too sciency on me. That's always my fear with sci-fi books... the first two were pretty good about keeping that to a minimum, but this last one was a bit out of control. Also, it presented so many people's points of view, it was a little hard to follow. Usually I'm okay with that, but this time, it was just a little too scattered. I almost wished there hadn't been this third novel.

Book preview

Acceptance - Susan Coll

April

GRACE SAW SHIMMERING TRAILS of light, even when she shut her eyes. The scores of bulbs illuminating the enormous wrought-iron chandelier chained to the rafters of the converted barn had imprinted themselves on her brain, and bursts of white danced inside her head like the tails of rogue comets. Her head throbbed, and she wished she could slip out of the middle of the row in the packed auditorium without causing a small commotion, embarrassing her son.

As a single mother, Grace couldn’t afford to actually get sick. Sick days were used to compensate for the spousal void in her family life, and she had just cashed in a week of them to accompany Harry on a spring-break road trip to tour college campuses. Surely she was just worn out from the long drive the previous day, followed by a night spent tossing and turning on a soggy, flea-ridden mattress at the bed-and-breakfast. The guidebook had advertised the Yates Inn as quaint, but she guessed that description was nearly as old as the place itself, a nineteenth-century moss green clapboard house that had lost its charm somewhere along the way, possibly a couple of decades ago, when it appeared to have last been painted.

She and Harry had raced to this 9:00 a.m. information session and campus tour, forgoing the inn’s complimentary pancake breakfast after learning it would take at least half an hour to reach the school by car. Dinner the previous night had been an inedible sandwich from a sketchy-looking diner in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that smelled like eggs, so it was possible that her current distress was really just hunger. Nevertheless, she felt her symptoms redouble as the preppy, boyish admissions officer at the podium responded to questions from anxious parents.

Can you tell us what percentage of the class is accepted early decision, and how much of an advantage does an early applicant have? A female inquisitor, whom Grace couldn’t actually see from where she sat, asked her question with an urgency that made her sound slightly hysterical.

This year, 55 percent of the class was admitted early decision, said the young man, who had earlier identified himself as Soren. So clearly, if Yates is your first choice, there’s an advantage to applying early. That said, all applications are considered on an individual basis. There is no magical formula for admittance.

What about the SAT? another parent asked. Is there a cutoff for scholarship eligibility? How much weight can you give to these numbers if they can’t even score the tests correctly?

Yes, of course that’s on everyone’s mind. But please don’t worry. We look at the application as a whole. The SATs are only one small piece of the puzzle. This answer elicited a few audible groans.

How many applied overall last year? What is the acceptance rate? And what about the wait list? asked a voice in the back of the room.

This year, we’ve had 4,601 applications. We ultimately accepted 35 percent of those. We have a wait list of approximately 300. It varies year to year, but last spring three moved off the list.

A few people coughed and rearranged themselves in the creaky folding chairs that had been set up to accommodate the overflow crowd, causing sounds of discomfort to ricochet around the acoustically challenged room. This was an alarmingly high rate of rejection for an obscure liberal arts college tucked in the middle of nowhere, requiring more than an hour’s drive off the main highway, along sixty-five miles of winding roads that snaked through fields of cornstalks and grazing cows.

Grace’s heart began racing. She took a deep breath. This had to be a really bad place to get sick—were there any doctors in this tiny town? They were at least two hours from anything even resembling a city. Looking around, Grace observed that a couple of other parents looked vaguely unwell, too. Perhaps there was not enough oxygen in the stifling auditorium, which was packed so tight it had surely exceeded its fire code capacity. Or maybe they were all just having garden-variety anxiety attacks, the result of absorbing this slow trickle of disconcerting information about college admissions.

The woman in front of her, who had earlier asked which undergraduate majors helped forge a path to the most prestigious MBA programs, took off her blue blazer and rolled up her sleeves. Grace noticed that the husband also wore a blue blazer and that the two boys sitting between them were clad in identical, brightly striped, Ralph Lauren polo shirts. It had not occurred to Grace to dress up for the occasion. She had thrown on a denim skirt and a favorite Gap sweater, and her long hair, secured in a ponytail, was still damp from the shower.

Soren fielded another question having to do with recommendation letters and whether a school’s music teacher counted as an academic reference. Recommendations are just one piece of the puzzle, he replied wearily, not actually responding to the subtleties of the question. There is no secret formula for admittance, he repeated. We look at the applicant as a whole.

Soren raked his fingers through a shock of unruly thick blond hair that looked deliberately, even expensively, mussed, as he tackled the next question. Grace thought he didn’t look like a man of much gravitas, but he did have the suggestive subliminal appeal of an Abercrombie & Fitch model. In fact, Grace had observed that the Yates University view book itself bore an uncanny resemblance to the controversial clothing catalogue, which, even in its cleaned-up, less overtly pornographic state, still featured pictures of scantily clad coeds who looked as if they’d just stumbled out of a frat party. She wondered if these images might have had something to do with Harry’s reluctant agreement to visit the campus, even though he had rejected all of his mother’s other non–Ivy League suggestions. But then, there was probably some other way to explain his compliance, since he was not the sort of boy who typically responded to the advertising stimuli so aggressively lobbed at his age group. Harry didn’t even own an iPod.

Mom, are you all right? Harry whispered in her ear. You look kind of funny.

I’m great, Grace replied, managing to pat him reassuringly on the knee.

Another parent asked a question about the importance of grades versus standardized test scores, and then wondered aloud about how much weight would be given to her son’s fluency in three languages and his forthcoming summer internship at NASA. Think of the application as a jigsaw puzzle, Soren said. Grades are one piece, scores are another. He sounded bored with his own answer, as though he uttered these same words several times a day, which he no doubt did. He had been asked some version of this same question at least six times in the last thirty minutes, and the schedule indicated that there were four separate information sessions being offered that day. The interrogator in this instance—a squat, wild-haired woman in her mid-fifties who resembled one of several hermit-like, mentally unbalanced chemists in Grace’s office—was not this easily put off. She wanted numbers, percentile groups, statistics, solid granules of information to record in the red, three-ring binder balanced on her lap. Specifically, she wanted to know whether her son, the skinny, meek-looking youth sitting next to her with the same unfortunate hair DNA, was going to be able to use Yates University as his safety school. There was a murmur in the room, as the rest of the audience absorbed and remarked on the arrogance of this question. Her poor son slumped in his chair.

Soren winced and stabbed at his chest with an invisible knife, pretending to be wounded. A few people laughed nervously. He smiled and fiddled with his hair before saying he was sure that after touring the campus in a few moments and getting to know a bit more about the place, her son would no longer regard Yates as his safety school. He then reviewed the mechanics of his jigsaw puzzle analogy.

Grace looked around the room and noticed for the first time that it was not just the obnoxious wild-haired woman who had a notebook, but that many of the parents, and several of the students, too, were recording Soren’s words. Harry also produced a small pad from his pocket and jotted something down.

Even if many of the parents in the room seemed too tightly wound, Grace still felt comforted by the sight of the kids themselves, the incoming freshmen of wherever it was they might wind up. Despite all the hand-wringing in the media about the moral decline of today’s youth—a phenomenon variously blamed on violent video games, instant messaging, text messaging, indecent MySpace postings, MTV, Internet pornography, and the supposedly widespread practice of hooking up—Grace observed that these kids seemed pretty similar in both dress and demeanor to her own peers some thirty years ago. Flare-bottomed jeans and tie-dyed T-shirts seemed to be back in style, and there was even a smattering of turquoise jewelry. At least on the surface, these kids all seemed to be polite and focused and frankly more conservative than she and her friends had been at their age.

Grace had little opportunity to make these sorts of observations at home. Her own son, Harry, was a teenaged anomaly who went off to high school each day as if he were on his way to a job as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He wore khaki pants with a starched shirt and blazer and carried a briefcase as well as a backpack. This might have seemed a recipe for social disaster, but no one dared mock Harry. During freshman year, when he was one of only three ninth-graders taking an Advanced Placement history class, he was assigned the nickname AP Harry. The teachers and the principal also knew him by this name. AP Harry had served as his junior class president and was currently campaigning to head the student body for the forthcoming school year. He was not an especially social creature, opting to spend most of his free time studying, but from what Grace could tell, he was not disliked. His classmates seemed to understand that he was golden, a mini–master of the universe at nearly seventeen; even if they didn’t want to be his friend, they didn’t want to get in his way.

Grace, too, understood that her son was an aberration. According to the child-rearing textbooks, Harry ought to be holding up liquor stores by now rather than apprenticing for a future in politics. Grace and her husband, Lou, had divorced when Harry was in second grade. And it was not the sort of quiet, amicable split one might expect from highly educated people living in the affluent suburbs, where parents went to family counselors and read books about how to protect the children from the emotional fallout of divorce. Rather, this was the sort of separation that involved the police, child services, teams of attorneys, the garnisheeing of Lou’s salary for failure to pay alimony and child support, a kidnapping attempt, the brandishing of a gun on their leafy street, and an eventual restraining order. As a consequence, Grace’s plans to stay home and be a full-time mother quickly fizzled. She worked long hours as a malaria researcher at the nearby National Institutes of Health, and Harry endured years of mediocre after-school day care. As if this were all some endless test from God, just when Grace felt things were under control a couple of years after Lou had ceased showing up drunk, in his pajamas, banging on her door in the middle of the night, the director of the afternoon child care program at Harry’s elementary school was arrested on charges of pedophilia.

Against all odds, Harry had not dropped out of high school or joined a gang: he was a student leader, the principal clarinetist in the school band, a boy who kept his room tidy and helped his mother uncomplainingly with chores. Grace was proud, but she found Harry’s drive alarming. She wished he would tone things down a notch and just be a kid.

Harry was extremely smart, but his transcript had a glitch, which was a piece of information he kept to himself, his secret shame. Until the fall of his junior year, he had never received anything other than an A. Then he took AP English Language, where despite herculean efforts he landed a humiliating B, a grade largely attributable to the emphasis on writing, with weekly in-class essays that factored heavily into the final grade. Harry claimed that the real problem was not with his writing skills, but with the teacher, Mr. Joyce, who he sensed didn’t like him. Harry perceived the B as the beginning of a downward spiral exacerbated by his first two stabs at the SAT. While his math score was a perfect 800, despite relentless cramming and expensive private tutoring sessions they could not really afford, he could not pump his critical reading score up over a 720, and his writing score was the same. Grace’s insistence that these numbers were, objectively, extremely impressive only seemed to exacerbate his frustration.

Grace couldn’t have cared less about any of this. Her chief ambition for her son was that he turn out to be a nice, decent human being, as unlike his own father as possible, and on this front she was watching worriedly. In temperament he was still the same sweet kid he’d always been, but his great march forward was sometimes disheartening to watch. She was confident that his drive would get him anywhere, with one possible exception. AP Harry was probably not going to get into Harvard. He was a strong candidate, but Grace could do the math: with a 9 percent acceptance rate, according to the last numbers she had seen, a middle-class white kid without a legacy did not have the odds in his favor. Yet Harry had his heart set on Harvard, and the word rejection was evidently not in his 720 vocabulary.

GRACE WONDERED if this session would ever end. She was beginning to perspire. The blue-blazered father in front of her folded the Yates brochure about freshman seminars into a makeshift fan. Campus tours were supposed to have already begun; they were twenty minutes off schedule, and the male model at the podium was having a hard time stemming the flow of increasingly frantic questions—every one of them from parents, she couldn’t help but observe.

A hand two rows in front shot up, and Grace thought she must have been hallucinating when she spied the distinctive chunky diamond ring of her across-the-street neighbor. Nina Rockefeller’s arm flailed crazily, like she was hailing a cab in a drenching rush hour storm. How unlikely was this? Grace had been going out of her way to avoid Nina for about two years, sneaking out of her house at odd hours to minimize the chances of running into her. Now she had driven more than four hundred miles to one of the most isolated college campuses in the northeastern United States, and there Nina was, just a few feet away.

For years they had been close friends, thrown together by the circumstances of geography and parenting. Harry and Nina’s daughter, Taylor, were both only children, and their birthdays were just two months apart. It was at first a natural, easy friendship even if they had little in common besides the kids. They spent years of languid weekend afternoons parked in lawn chairs sipping iced tea, watching the children run from yard to yard, their miniature plastic ride-on cars giving way to sophisticated water guns and, later, walkie-talkies, baseball bats, and Frisbees as the summers ticked by.

As the kids grew older, however, Nina seemed to grow weirdly competitive, and Grace began to dread their exchanges. Plus, Nina was a talker, and just bumping into her outside their homes could cost as much as half an hour. There were mornings when Grace even put off retrieving the newspaper from her driveway if she spied Nina on her porch, watering her plants. Grace assuaged her guilt by telling herself she simply didn’t have time for idle morning chatter or she’d be late for work. Lately, though, her efforts at avoidance had become more deliberate as Nina was edging toward insufferable, never veering far off the topic of the bright future of her remarkable daughter, Taylor.

Grace thought her neighbor was joking when she raised the topic of college the summer before the kids began eighth grade. Hoping to change the subject, Grace naively quipped that it didn’t yet matter; until they entered high school, she said, they could at least enjoy life without stressing out about test scores and grades. Nina was quick to set her straight. Any high school–level classes the kids took in middle school would show up on their final transcripts, she reported. Nina explained that the county had recently changed the policy of letting students erase these grades from their records in an attempt to curb grade inflation. An A in an honors class carried a higher-weighted value than an A in a regular class, but in Verona County there were no honors classes offered in middle school. This was just wordplay, however, since the students had been tracked and then grouped according to their abilities since around the time they learned to tie their shoes, and a certain sliver of kids were working at an accelerated level regardless of the name slapped on the course. Nina’s point was evidently that a straightforward, old-fashioned A, even in a mind-numbingly difficult class, could technically bring down a student’s overall GPA. Grace couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. She understood the mathematical principle involved, but still, wasn’t an A an A? But she nodded her head, pretending to acknowledge this grave injustice.

Grace knew it was absurd to let these sorts of conversations make her anxious. Harry was so driven that she didn’t need to keep an eye on his performance; if anything she worried that he would drive himself insane trying to manipulate his already solid record. Still, sometimes Nina made her feel like she wasn’t doing enough. Not only had Nina signed Taylor up for SAT prep three years ahead of the normal schedule, but she also put on retainer what she said was the best private college counseling service in the country, recently profiled in The Wall Street Journal. Undaunted by the fact that the consultancy was based in New York, or that their fee for two years of advice was more than $30,000, Nina opined that it would reduce family tension to have an outside party be in charge of guiding Taylor through the touchy process.

In an effort to avoid these harrowing conversations, Grace had begun to set her alarm half an hour early on weekday mornings so that she could walk her dog before Nina set out in one of her several bright pink sweat suits, yanking her overweight schnauzer along on a Burberry leash. Grace’s dog, a gentle giant of a mutt that appeared to be at least part Saint Bernard, must have had some sixth sense about the Rockefeller’s pet because her hair stood on end whenever he approached, which added a second layer of tension to their walks. But even a willingness to sacrifice precious minutes of sleep offered no respite; just last week Nina had spied Grace two long blocks ahead and had run to catch up, shouting for her to wait.

Terrific news, she had said, remarkably well-put-together with makeup and jewelry at 7:00 a.m. Grace assumed she was going to deliver some encouraging update on the house next door to her and catty-corner to Nina, an eyesore that had been on the market for an entire month. Instead, she announced breathlessly, Taylor just got straight A’s.

Grace feigned enthusiasm but inwardly recoiled. Didn’t grades fall into the zone of private information, along with age and weight and financial net worth? She could not imagine ever talking about Harry’s grades with anyone other than his teachers or his guidance counselor. Or possibly Harry’s father, although that was purely hypothetical because they were not actually on speaking terms.

Grace reminded herself that she had resolved not to get sucked into this snakepit of parental competition. Study after study showed that there was no correlation between where a person went to college and his or her future happiness, or even earning power. She knew plenty of people who had underachieved in their youth and had gone on to do great things. And she could cite many examples of the reverse—kids who burned out by the time they got to college or simply couldn’t cope without their parents micromanaging their lives; she had heard of some parents who even called their college kids to wake them up for morning classes. But it was hard to step back when everyone at Harry’s high school, students and parents alike, spoke of little else, and the kids were all jockeying to get into the same handful of schools. At a recent junior parents’ meeting, the head of guidance had rattled off a series of sobering statistics, including the fact that from this year’s class of 496 graduating seniors, 53 had applied to Cornell, 57 to Northwestern, and 59 to the University of Pennsylvania. All of them had GPAs over 3.8. About ten kids were admitted to each school, and five were accepted to all three. As Grace pondered these numbers, she couldn’t help but think that ironically, this would make a good math problem on the SAT. On the subject of identifying the right safety school, the guidance counselor had referenced the terrifying, widely gossiped about, and evidently true story of the National Merit finalist who applied to twelve schools and didn’t get into a single one.

Sometimes when she heard these anxiety-inducing anecdotes, Grace wondered whether she had been smart to remain in the area after her divorce. She had stretched herself financially, heavily mortgaging their house, because this was arguably one of the best public school systems not just in the state, but in the country. But lately she had begun to think she had done Harry a disservice by staying. Perhaps he would be driving himself less hard, and would have a better sense of perspective, if she had relocated to some small town in the Midwest. And even if she was wrong about that—if this college mania had reached into the most remote pockets of America—at least a community of less means might have other sorts of benefits, like fewer kids with credit cards, or a lower percentage of luxury cars in the student parking lot.

Still, Grace tried hard not to let Harry’s preoccupation become her own. She knew there were hundreds of good colleges out there, some of which she had never even heard of before, like Yates. She had done just fine going to the University of Maryland, which had been the only school her parents could afford. It had never occurred to her to feel short-changed. She always felt she’d received a perfectly decent education and had not suffered, apart from the unfortunate fact that she had met Lou in an anatomy class and made the mistake of marrying him.

As it was, Harry was most definitely part of the problem, if not the most extreme version of it around. He had memorized the U.S. News & World Report rankings of the top fifty liberal arts colleges as well as the separate list of universities—those offering both doctorates and masters—and he frequently asked Grace to quiz him to see if he had his numbers straight. At first Grace had played along, not fully grasping the point of the exercise. But once she realized the pathos of what he was doing—obsessing about whether Pomona ranked 7 or 8 and how many points that was above, say, Oberlin (14)—she refused to play, even when Harry insisted that he was just sharpening his memory retention skills. (Yates had entered the list for the first time ever last year, coming in at number 50.) Even without her help, he had lately progressed to the point where he could provide subcategories, such as a school’s selectivity rank and average rate of alumni giving.

The last time Grace bumped into Nina—another morning encounter in which Grace pretended unsuccessfully that her headphones prevented her from hearing her neighbor’s noisy, chipper approach—Nina told her she was doing some reading to learn where various well-connected American women had gone to college and where they had met their spouses. Grace laughed out loud, certain she was kidding, but the hurt look on Nina’s face assured her this was not a joke.

After that conversation, Grace had made an even more radical change to her schedule. She began to set her alarm a full hour early and would sneak out in the dark to walk the dog. All of these efforts had failed her spectacularly, however, because here was Nina, just two rows away. As Grace leaned forward to stretch the muscles in her back while the admissions counselor repeated his clichés, the ostentatious diamond in Nina’s ring caught a streak of sunlight, refracting it into even more bouncing specks in Grace’s pounding head.

Taylor sat beside her mother, looking sullen. She seemed to be in distress. Regardless of whether Taylor was as brilliant as her mother claimed, she was no longer the happy, freckle-faced little girl who used to play roller hockey in the street with Harry and all of the neighborhood kids. Sometime in the last year, she had become transformed into a pale, haunted-looking teenager. Her once luminous black hair was now tinged with purple and hung in greasy, unkempt strands. Grace wondered if perhaps the girl was using drugs. But that didn’t seem quite right, given that Taylor had become a complete loner and, while hardly fat, didn’t have that heroin-chic, skin-and-bones physique one tended to equate with a serious drug habit. Grace wasn’t an expert on these things, but she did assume that at least part of the allure of the drug culture was the instant camaraderie. Yet Harry reported that Taylor sat alone at lunch each day, declining his occasional invitations to join him. He also said she fled school after the final bell rang and on the few occasions that he left at the same time, she seemed to deliberately sprint ahead to avoid him.

From her slightly elevated position, Grace could see that Nina’s roots were growing in darker than the rest of her blond hair. Her hand continued to wave frantically, but so many other hands competed that young Soren kept passing her over. Nina actually began to blurt out her question unsolicited, but at that precise moment Soren finally found the wherewithal to declare the information session over, instructing them to break into small groups for the campus tours. They were trying something new this year, he explained. Students would go on one set of tours, parents on another. He told them where to gather, accordingly.

Are you all right? Harry asked his mother again, shaking her gently on the shoulder. "You look kind of pale, Mom…pale, sallow, pallid, wan…"

Grace forced a smile and blotted her forehead with a piece of used tissue she found in her pocket. "Ashen?" she asked.

Very good, Mom, Harry said, smiling adorably.

The synonym game was something else he liked to play, something he had read about in an SAT prep book. Grace feigned more enthusiasm than she really felt for the game, but she played along on the ground that at least it was not as obnoxious as the U.S. News game. Plus, she felt it was the least she could do, given his frustration with his score.

You really look awful, Mom, he said as they filed out of the row.

Thanks, Harry… Just what I wanted to hear. But if you don’t mind, I am feeling kind of…

Peaky?

Yes. Well put. Peaked. So I think I’ll skip the tour. You go ahead. I’ll wait here…

She pointed toward a set of armchairs in the outer room of the barn flanked by a table with two alluring pots of coffee and a platter of doughnuts. But then she saw Nina Rockefeller coming straight toward her. Or maybe I’ll find a nice bench, outside.

TAYLOR WONDERED HOW the perky tour guide managed to walk backwards without slipping out of her flip-flops or crashing into any of the small statues scattered around the campus. The weird little sculptures, almost all of animals which appeared to be either slightly deformed or maybe just weather-worn, cropped up in the same haphazard manner as the daffodils, one of which, sprouting through a crack in the sidewalk, she accidentally stepped on. Taylor was not one to notice landscaping, but there was something slightly off about the grounds at Yates. Unlike the more manicured campuses she had already visited, with geometric quads and clipped shrubbery, this campus was not just scruffy, but somehow askew. Most of the classroom and administrative buildings were shrouded in overgrown greenery, and weeds adorned the lawns. The whole place seemed to need a good trim. Still, she found the campus strangely enchanting. This was the first school she visited where she had the intuitive sense that this was exactly where she belonged, the annoying tour guide notwithstanding.

At home, just outside Washington, D.C., the temperature was already in the low 70s. It hadn’t occurred to Taylor that the weather would be this different, and she wished she had brought a sweater. She wondered if it ever really got warm in upstate New York. After about twenty minutes, with stops at the library and the recreation center, Taylor had had enough of listening to this cheerful, too-thin girl prattle on about how great the social life was at Yates. She had been particularly effusive in describing the Friday night theme parties and the accompanying complimentary cocktails. Hawaiian luau night with piña coladas; California surfer night with margaritas; Caribbean night with some drink Taylor had never heard of that had something to do with pineapple and rum. Taylor wondered just how landlocked they were, how cold and dark and dreary it must get in midwinter to make students want to dress up in straw skirts and pretend there was not several feet of snow on the ground.

Anyway, Taylor was not interested in the social life at Yates so much as in the bathrooms. It was surprising how not a single one of the many college books she had pored over, including Princeton Review, Fiske, or even the more gossipy Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, ever mentioned the bathrooms. The guidebooks all seemed more focused on students’ fashion sensibilities. The Insider’s Guide mentioned that everyone at Yates wore trendy North Face fleeces, for example, which she found to be a minor turnoff, notwithstanding the fact that she owned three of them herself.

She had heard there was a handful of schools that reportedly had bathrooms with special attributes—the University of Richmond, for instance, was said to have granite countertops with inlaid sinks, and Barnard boasted basins placed at a convenient height for shaving legs—but this was not her concern. She didn’t especially care what amenities the bathroom had to offer; she just wanted one of her own.

As they made their way across the campus, down a tree-lined circular path, Taylor wondered hopefully if they were headed toward the dorms. This was generally her favorite part of the tour, even if it was an exercise of limited value. The schools only showed the nicer accommodations, but it at least gave a sense of the range of possibilities and might help answer the bathroom question, although getting a glimpse was sometimes tricky. She would never be the one to ask, but there was always the possibility that someone else would want to assess the bathroom situation. It was usually the parents who asked the embarrassing questions, however, and at Yates the adults had curiously been sent on their own tours. While this was a good thing in that it got her away from her mother, it did decrease the likelihood of learning anything useful. Certainly, it was not a kid who had asked to see the hygienic facilities during a recent tour at a school in Baltimore. Others in the group had laughed when one of the mothers made the request, but then every single person filed in to sneak a peek, a few of them even swinging open the doors to the stalls to inspect the toilets. Taylor did not need to test the flushing capacity to determine that those facilities were insufficient for her needs; not only had they not been private, but worse—coed. It was not easy for her to explain, even to herself, why she sought a private

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