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Book Summary and Reviews of Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Admission

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

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  • Published:
  • Apr 2009, 464 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

"Admissions. Admission. Aren't there two sides to the word? And two opposing sides...It's what we let in, but it's also what we let out."

For years, 38-year-old Portia Nathan has avoided the past, hiding behind her busy (and sometimes punishing) career as a Princeton University admissions officer and her dependable domestic life. Her reluctance to confront the truth is suddenly overwhelmed by the resurfacing of a life-altering decision, and Portia is faced with an extraordinary test. Just as thousands of the nation's brightest students await her decision regarding their academic admission, so too must Portia decide whether to make her own ultimate admission.

Admission is at once a fascinating look at the complex college admissions process and an emotional examination of what happens when the secrets of the past return and shake a woman's life to its core.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"[E]ven if Portia tends to ruminate in a precious way, Korelitz makes good use of the sociological issues tied up in elite university admissions." - Publishers Weekly.

"Starred Review. Readers will experience the challenge of the admissions process at an Ivy League school, where every applicant tends toward the extraordinary. This engaging and surprisingly suspenseful novel is highly recommended." - Library Journal

"Starred Review. Strongly plotted, crowded with full-bodied characters and as thoughtful about 'this national hysteria over college admissions' as it is about the protagonist's complex personality - a fine, moving example of traditional realistic fiction." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Admission was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Jean Hanff Korelitz

Jean Hanff Korelitz was born and raised in New York and graduated from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge. She is the author of one book of poems and three previous novels, as well as a novel for children. She has also published essays in a number of anthologies. She lives in Princeton, NJ with her husband (Irish poet Paul Muldoon, poetry editor at The New Yorker and Princeton poetry professor) and two children.

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