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Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep was one of those came-out-of-nowhere first novels that made waves: After a modest first printing of 15,000 copies in 2005, more than 600,000 are now in print.
Sittenfeld's flinty portrayal in Prep of angst-ridden antics at a prep school nailed the emotional baggage of the modern adolescent. In The Man of My Dreams, Sittenfeld gets inside the man-obsessed motives that strike some women in their late teens and 20s.
The result: Dreams could be the women's novel of the summer, the one they talk about, dissect, analyze and compare with their own experiences.
In this insightful book, Sittenfeld asks: Does every woman deserve a soul mate?
Modern women might cringe at a story about a young woman who, for most of this novel, is looking for the perfect man.
Despite the title, Dreams is no frothy tale of looking for love. Hannah Gavener, Sittenfeld's protagonist, is no chick-lit chick. She's not perky, pretty and effervescent. She's plain, obstinate and sometimes very hard to like.
The novel begins when Hannah is 14 and obsessed with the love life of Julia Roberts and her then-fiance, future 24 star Kiefer Sutherland. The celebrity couple break up at the time Hannah's parents' marriage is dissolving. This all makes her wonder about any romance the future may hold for her.
Hannah is in college in the novel's second section, and it's always someone else who is being loved or having sex with college boys. At 20, she has never been kissed.
Eventually, she takes a stab at love, but things don't work out. Mike thinks she's perfect, but she gets sick of kissing him; Oliver can't stay faithful to her, and Henry can't commit.
As Dreams winds down, Hannah, in her mid-20s, is still searching, still dumping and still getting dumped. But age, experience and observation are serving as wake-up calls to the meaning of love and life.
Sittenfeld offers no happily ever after, and nothing monumental happens in Dreams. The characters live spectacularly normal lives.
What she offers them is what we all hope the world will throw our way: opportunities for love and happiness, even if we never find a soul mate.
The Man of My Dreams
By Curtis Sittenfeld
Random House, 269 pp., $22.95
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