A book review from The Movie Snob.

I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe. I greatly enjoyed Wolfe’s two previous novels, Bonfire of the Vanities and A Man in Full, but I had some doubts about his new book. Could a writer in his 70’s write a convincing novel about modern-day college life, especially one whose protagonist is a brilliant but naive 18-year-old girl fresh from the sticks? Well, I’m not sure the book is entirely convincing, but Wolfe’s writing is as fun and energetic as ever. The book opens with the title character's graduating from high school in the tiny backwater of Sparta, North Carolina, and then heading off to elite Dupont University. There her provincial manners and morals are subjected to one shock after another. She is scandalized by her dorm’s co-ed bathrooms, filleted by her wealthy roommate’s sarcasm, and flabbergasted by the two major hobbies pursued by DU’s elite student body—drinking and sex, in massive quantities. Her conspicuous lack of accomplishment in either arena quickly condemns her to unpopularity and loneliness, and the main drama of the book is whether (and to what extent) she will compromise her distinctly un-modern beliefs to escape her unhappiness. Three male archetypes emerge to pitch woo her way—shiftless, good-looking frat boy Hoyt Thorpe, sincere but none-too-bright basketball star Jojo Johanssen, and intellectual, egotistical, hopelessly nerdy Adam Gellin. Whom, if any of them, will she choose? At what cost to her soul? Sure, it’s an outlandish and outrageous book in some respects, but close enough to reality that I enjoyed the ride.