Posh

Kathryn "Lazy" Hoffman is the headmistress of the Griffin School, in the midst of an affair she almost can't remember why she started – her marriage, after all, is a good one. Lazy ministers to students, but her cross to bear is the parents: from the imperious head of the board of trustees to the more average thorns who just can't understand why their little darlings aren't fast-tracked to Harvard.

There is one student who is clearly on his way to Cambridge: Michael Avery, smart and driven, but so troubled it's hard for him to get through life as a senior in high school. That drill includes his girlfriend Julianne Coopersmith, a sweetly compassionate child of divorce who happily wears hand-me-down designer clothes from her best friend, and adores Michael even in the face of his neediness and meltdowns. After all, she's all he has – he certainly doesn't have his mother, Susan, who finds it easier to love her Chinese Crested Hairless than her own brilliant and tortured son.

Fast-paced, gently satirical, yet deeply felt, Posh is a surprisingly poignant and knowing novel distinguished by its spare and elegant prose.