The Admissions
Meg Mitchell Moore, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385540049
Summary
The frazzled pressure cooker of modern life as a seemingly perfect family comes undone by a few desperate measures, long-buried secrets—and college applications!
The Hawthorne family has it all. Great jobs, a beautiful house in one of the most affluent areas of northern California, and three charming kids with perfectly straight teeth. And then comes their eldest daughter's senior year of high school . . .
Firstborn Angela Hawthorne is a straight-A student and star athlete, with extracurricular activities coming out of her ears and a college application that's not going to write itself. She's set her sights on Harvard, her father's alma mater, and like a dog with a chew toy, Angela won't let up until she's basking in crimson-colored glory.
Except her class rank as valedictorian is under attack, she's suddenly losing her edge at cross-country, and she can't help but daydream about the cute baseball player in English class. Of course Angela knows the time put into her schoolgirl crush would be better spent coming up with a subject for her term paper—which, along with her college essay and community service hours has a rapidly approaching deadline.
Angela's mother, Nora, is similarly stretched to the limit, juggling parent-teacher meetings, carpool, and a real-estate career where she caters to the mega rich and super-picky buyers and sellers of the Bay Area.
The youngest daughter, Maya, still can't read at the age of eight; the middle-child, Cecily, is no longer the happy-go-lucky kid she once was; and the dad, Gabe, seems oblivious to the mounting pressures at home because a devastating secret of his own might be exposed.
A few ill-advised moves put the Hawthorne family on a heedless collision course that's equal parts achingly real and delightfully screwball.
Sharp and topical, The Admissions shows that if you pull at a loose thread, even the sturdiest of lives start to unravel at the seams of high achievement. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—ca. 1971-72
• Raised—on military bases around the US
• Education—B.A., Providence College; M.A., New York University
• Currently—Newburyport, Massachusetts
Meg Mitchell Moore is an American author of several novels, including her most widely known, Admissions (2015). With a father in the U.S. Navy, she grew up on military bases around the country, eventually spending her senior year in Winter Harbor, Maine, where she graduated from high school.
From there Mitchell went to Providence College to earn her B.A. and spend a junior year abroad at Oxford University. Then it was on to New York University for her M.A. in English literature.
Following her school years, Mitchell moved to Boston, becoming a writer for technology magazines and, later, for a number of business and consumer magazines.
When her husband took a new job, the family—with an infant daughter and another on the way—moved to Vermont. It was a turning point for Mitchell, who eventually applied and was accepted into the storied Bread Loaf Writers' Conference at Middlebury College.
As she says on her website, she took up writing at a very young age: the moment she "figured out how the cursive T and F were different. So while Mitchell always wanted to write, Bread Loaf convinced her that she needed to.
Her debut The Arrivals came out in 2011, followed the next year by So Far Away. Her third book, Admissions, was published in 2015. Regarding the length parents will go to get their children into top colleges, the novel was inspired by living in California for a single year. There Mitchell witnessed parents who would do what it took, no matter the toll on the family, to ensure their children got the best (and most expensive) shot in life. Admissions was well received: Publishers Weekly called it "a page turner as well as an insightful character study."
A fourth novel, The Captain's Daughter (2017), takes place in Maine, a setting loosely based on Winter Harbor where Mitchell spent her last year in high school. (Adapted from various online sources and the author's webpage.)
Book Reviews
[S]tellar.... Moore successfully conveys how the quest for excellence spares no one in this industrious clan: even cheerful middle child, Cecily, loses her sense of self after a mistake costs her dance team. This is a page-turner as well as an insightful character study.
Publishers Weekly
[Meg Mitchell Moore's] unique voice and unflinching yet sympathetic perspective combine to create a story that is fresh and unexpectedly entertaining. Moore presents her characters in all their flawed glory and lovable short-sighted determination, spinning out the story of one family’s collapse and rebirth with energy and wit. Part thought-provoking commentary, part zany satire on the definition of success and the choices some are willing to make to achieve it, this is a book that is sure to earn a good deal of attention.
RT Book Reviews
The members of a high-achieving Marin County family face their fears: applying to college, blowing a deal, revealing their secrets.... Moore has an excellent eye for the minutiae of upper-middle-class life, but it gets exhausting immersing yourself in another family's worries on top of your own. Moore's readers may find this book cuts a little too close to home.
Kirkus Reviews
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