Hancock Park: A Novel [Hardcover]

Isabel Kaplan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2009

Becky Miller lives in the best neighborhood, goes to school with the children of movie stars, and has her psychiatrist on speed dial. She may live in the City of Angels, but this sixteen-year-old’s life is far from perfect. By day, Becky navigates the halls of one of L.A.’s most elite schools, and at night she deals with sparring parents—all without the help of her best friend, who just moved across the country. So when the coolest girls in school suddenly take an interest in her, Becky hopes her life is about to take a turn for the fabulous.

Written by someone who has seen it all, Hancock Park follows the crazy lives of Hollywood teens, as one girl tries to stay sane in the middle of it all.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set in Los Angeles, teenage author Kaplan's debut details 16-year-old Becky's struggles with her parents' divorce and her social life after her best friend moves to New York. Readers (and Becky) learn of her intelligence when she takes an IQ test and has high results, but little in her observations and narrative suggest a genius to accompany that score (her involvement in the Model UN at all-girl's academy feels forced). Her desire to be popular fluctuates between her scorn for the Trinity, the popular girls in her junior class, and her joy at hanging out with them ("I had gone out with an extremely attractive, very popular boy, and I was friends with the most popular girls in school. Life was good"). Slowly, Becky makes some positive changes-she switches from a prescription-happy psychiatrist to a more effectual one, and realizes her new boyfriend is a jerk. Her problems will resonate with and be familiar to readers, though her personal growth feels rushed and does not build in a realistic way. Ages 14-up.
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From School Library Journal

Grade 8–11—In this debut novel, Kaplan has created a teenager who actually talks, thinks, and acts like one. Angeleno Becky Miller, 16, like most of her friends, has parents in "the business": Mom has a talk show and Dad is an entertainment attorney. Although both of them have good intentions and love their children, they have little time to interact with them on a daily basis. Becky and her younger brother pretty much manage their own lives. The stress of this lifestyle really affects her, and she shows signs of OCD and severe anxiety, which heavy medication only partially relieves. Becky knows that she needs to keep her life together while everything else, including her parents' marriage, is falling apart, but it's tough when you don't have much control over such matters. This pivotal semester is a true test of her character and endurance, and as she stumbles through, readers will relate to her difficulties and cheer for her successes. Kaplan is an author to watch.—Susan Riley, Mount Kisco Public Library, NY
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 14 and up
  
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper Teen; 1 edition (June 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061246522
• ISBN-13: 978-0061246524
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,255,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So fun!, September 20, 2010

By 

catzzz - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hancock Park: A Novel (Hardcover)

Hancock Park is such a fun read! The protagonist is a sympathetic, believable girl who is generally nice, but still flawed. I like how the book deals with a lot of the clichés of being a teenager without resorting to clichés in its plot or characters. Ms. Kaplan knows how being a teenager really works--it's a strange mix of fabulous and pathetic that she captures very nicely. An added bonus is that her writing is very, very funny.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surprisingly relatable, September 18, 2010

By 

seahorselover - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hancock Park: A Novel (Hardcover)

Despite the outrageous world that Becky experiences, her actual encounters and emotional experiences are surprisingly familiar. I would also say that the fact that her very teenage experience is decorated in a world of glamour and wealth makes the reading more interesting. It is all to easy to find a novel documenting the average girl in an average world but so much more entertaining to read about my own experiences in a new way. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is or has ever been a teenage girl. :-)

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars As a senior at "Whitbread," this book is a sham., April 21, 2011

By 

Annonymous - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hancock Park (Paperback)

I go to the school that Kaplan went to, a.k.a. "Whitbread Academy." I am actually in shock that anyone would even try and get away painting that picture of our school/the people who go there. Our school is nothing like that. Essentially she dramatized a couple minute details about our school (the cake once made in the shape of the school, the hybrid fleet in the parking lot, the security guards moving our cars) and used it to craft some absurd depiction that has never existed....."The Trinity" depicts maybe 3 girls in the entire history of the school, the rest of the students look dress and act virtually nothing like they did when they went there. This is not an elitist school for spoiled LA girls with their own shrinks and it pisses me and most of the other students off that she would depict it like that. No one orders Spago to-go. No one has a driver. And yeah, I get it, this book is "fiction," but fiction implies some degree of an imagination and creative work, and it takes very little of either to blow up a few tiny, insignificant details and craft a cliched world out of it. Most of the characters are derived from girls who actually went to our school or were in her class, except she reduced their entire personalities down to a few details about each of them. To name them, she just kept the syllables and flipped the letters...so if someone's name started with a V in real life, she made it start with an A in her book, if it started with an M, she made it a W. Not exactly the Rosetta Stone.

"Whitbread Academy" is, in reality, a very academic-oriented all girls' school with a specific personality about it. And this personality could not be called "snobby" or "socially exclusive" under any strain. Most everyone "just rolls out of bed". No one cares what you are wearing, and sweatpants under the uniform skirt is the most prevalent winter trend. It's more common for girls to bond over how long it's been since they last shaved their legs. The only consistent complaints heard regularly among students is that there is so much work, and they are so stressed, and don't know any boys. And while I don't know everything about Kaplan's personal experiences at "Whitbread", considering that I still went there when she did, I can say with confidence that it would be MUCH easier for a "Becky" type (her protagonist) to readily make friends there than any girl depicted in "the Trinity". I understand why it might come off as a "fun poolside read" for teenage girls, but in reality "Hancock Park" seems to me like a forum for Kaplan to blow off some steam about certain girls and aspects of our school/education that irritated her. By making such a large case over such insignificant discrepancies about our school, to us she comes off as the very over-privledged girls she so willingly mocks in her story. While I respect the overall message that she sends by the conclusion of the book, she essentially shames our school and the students who go there in doing so, and we really resent the falsified means by which to achieve that end.