Jonty Claypole

And I think the question, and it's the question going to be running through this episode is,

is what is so fascinating about American high schools that over the last 40, 50 years, they've become a genre in cinema and fiction that has totally eclipsed, totally eclipsed what was previously the dominant school genre, which was English public school fiction.

So prior to recording, I said, Sophie, this is so boring because your answer is obviously going to be Clueless.

And then you got all up to tea.

You got all up to tea and said, I'm not telling you.

I'm not telling you.

This is The Secret Life of Books.

I am Jonty Claypole, high school sporting hero, trying to get my studies done while also focusing on the important things in life, which is scoring.

I don't even know the language.

Scoring my next try in American football.

What would I do?

Touchdown, dude.

Touchdown.

I'm all about the touchdown.

Prep was the secret history of American boarding school stories when it came out, a never-before-seen glimpse into what really went on in these miniature Ivy League high school campuses, laid out like lavish small towns in suburban and rural pockets of East Coast America.

We're in the world of the American class system, a taboo, often ignored, unacknowledged side of American life.

And the theme of prep is that class is as pervasive as race in creating inequality and unearned power systems in America.

Curtis Sittenfeld would take on other iconic American stories and subsequent novels, rewriting the worlds of First Lady Laura Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Her special talent has been an ability to bring a tonally flat, excruciatingly detailed outsider observer's eye to the rituals, mores and social markers of America's white, well-educated elites.

So what we're going to be asking in this fourth episode and final episode on school stories, although how can we not come back and do another series of school stories before too long?