Every so often, a book comes along that is so brilliant, it gives you goosebumps. So it was with Prep, Curtis Sittenfeld’s first novel. It told the story of Lee Fiora, a lower-middle-class girl from Indiana who wins a scholarship to a smart Massachusetts prep school. It was a dazzling examination of the dark pain and loneliness of adolescence.

Sittenfeld has now given us a second novel: The Man of My Dreams. It follows fourteen years in the life of Hannah Gavener, from teenager to adult, as she balances a troubled relationship with her moderately unhinged father, her personal neuroses and an unabashed yearning for a nice