If I had to read the line, “I am Charlotte Simmons!” one more time I would’ve puked. This novel needed an editor’s touch. It’s too long and loosely written, excruciatingly repetitive. The plot is transparent and predictable. The ending wraps up everything with a pretty little pink ribbon that readers can see coming from the first couple of chapters. There is absolutely nothing endearing about Charlotte’s character, nothing that makes me identify with what she goes through or feel for her in any way other than that she’s a silly self-absorbed twerp. But shouldn’t even silly self-absorbed twerps, when they are the main character in a novel, have some redeeming quality that makes you care for them? I cared more about the villanious frat boy, Hoyt, than I cared about Charlotte. I could at least feel for him and understand where he was coming from even if I disagreed with his behaviour. Characters are supposed to change over the course of a novel, and especially in one of this size, you would think something would happen. Charlotte changes from the sweet studious hick to a social climbing sorority wannabe right at the start of the novel and stays that way until the end when she finally nabs the boyfriend who elevates her to sorority status on the college social ladder. Bah! This book doesn’t even deserve this much thought and discussion.

i might have had less expectations of this book if i hadn’t read The Bonfire of Vanities before. It was actually a nice, easy book (the plot is pretty thin), that I read really fast. But I was kind of disappointed with the end. Another thing that I regret is that I read it in french, and the translation is not really good.

Mostly tolerable, except from some greatly exaggerated and overblown bits that had me flipping the pages rapidly to find a less-painful tenor. This is my first Tom Wolfe, believe it or not, and I’m not sure I should read his earlier works if this is any indication of what to expect.