Customer Reviews

Hancock Park: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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. :-)

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.

I've read in several of these reviews complaints about the book's accuracy. Often I find what's compelling about fiction is its ability, through characters as carefully and elegantly crafted as those Ms. Kaplan has written, to communicate much more than "accurate" reality ever could. It truly is an enjoyable story, one that I've already recommended wholeheartedly to several of my friends and relatives, both male and female, and I hope to read more from Ms. Kaplan in the future!

Given some of the hype this book got early on, I expected more from it. The story was so-so and could have been much better if the author had fleshed out her characters and the story more. The characters all seemed as if they had more story to tell, yet the author left them all feeling rather shallow. I almost stopped reading it several times, but finished because I had paid so much for it.

my gf and i both really enjoyed this book, and we're in our 20s. it's an insight into what kids are up against these days, especially privileged kids. plus it's really well written -- funny, smart, good characters and story. i want to read her next book!!

I can't believe this stunning debut novel was written by an eighteen-year-old! Our heroine, Becky Miller, is an average girl with an above-average life. She goes to an elite L.A. high school, and appears to live the dream life. And, aside from her struggles with mental health, Becky is mostly okay with being average. She has her best friend, Amanda, to lean on. But when Amanda moves to New York and Becky's parents split up, it turns out that junior year will be tougher than predicted. To make matters worse, her shrink has just gotten in trouble for prescribing Becky way too much medication. On the bright side, the Trinity - the school's most elite clique - have their eye on Becky. Before she knows it, Becky is popular. But of course this comes with strings attached - Becky can't be the public brainiac she used to be, or hang out with drama-geek Taylor, who might be her only real friend now that Amanda's gone. With her self-worth dwindling, Becky has choices to make. Can she find her old self, or is the new Becky the real Becky after all? In stark contrast to the no-consequences world of Gossip Girl, Hancock Park is a strong, fulfilling addition to teen literature. I can't recommend this enough to girls who want to read about the glam life, but don't want to ditch the real life altogether. I'm looking forward to seeing more novels from Isabel Kaplan.

They always say to write what you know. If this is the way Isabel Kaplan writes, she knows quite a privileged world most young adults do not. Having said that, it doesn't necessarily mean that the main theme of the book isn't relatable to most young adults. Most high schoolers yearn for popularity and acceptance among their peers while alienating other friends who are "less desirable" among the cool crowd. When their homelife is turned upside down, it's like the end of the world to them. And some teenagers often make embarrassing mistakes, especially in the age of Facebook (makes me happy FB wasn't around when I was a teenager). The thing I enjoyed most about her main character, Becky. is that she was for the most part a very self aware teenager, someone I could have related to in high school. She is very mature and extremely smart despite her desire to be apart of the vapid "Trinity" club. In the end, she chooses being herself over being a lemming without all the Hollywood ending. If anything, this book speaks to those overachieving nerdy girls out there who are anything but popular. The point is, always stay true to yourself. I wonder if there will be a follow up book? Perhaps Becky in college among those who are her intellectuals equals than the microcosom of her private high school?

The glitz, glamor, and stiletto heels of a highbrow intellectual at an all-girls prep school admix with her very human, gray-toned sense of what it's like to be a teenage girl lost in the frock of her own emotions. Reading about protagonist Becky's romantic letdowns, the idiosyncrasies of her family, and the vertigo of holding inside herself a tumultuous world is not taking antidepressants and swallowing a cocktail at the same time -- something that Becky does herself. This book is an astonishing, punchy bildungsroman rife with wry humor and turns of phrase. An amazing first accomplishment of Kaplan and a quick read, "Hancock Park" will remind older generations about the awkward life-beginnings of teenage years, inform one about the inner workings of the rich and famous, and empathize with young adult girls who are uncovering what it's like to grown into the mind and body of a woman.

We bought this book for our teenage daughter in order to encourage her to keep reading. Unlike so many books for young adults on the market today, it features a fresh and witty protagonist who is smart yet still very much a teenage girl! She is a believable character and even though her high school experience is vastly different from our daughter's, she found the characters to all be very relatable to as a teenager herself. Definitely a good read for any young adult, but also a fascinating look into the life of a young person growing up with so many social pressures, not to mention academic ones. I recommend this book as a gift for anyone with a young daughter, but I was also personally very impressed by Ms. Kaplan's writing and use of narrative - I picked it up once and found myself going through the whole thing in a day! We are excited to see what new ideas Ms. Kaplan will produce - as a young and talented writer, she has a bright future ahead. Definitely 5 stars.