By: Nash Jenkins
Goodreads description:
Prep meets The Secret History in this sprawling debut novel about a tragic scandal at an American prep school, told in the form of a literary investigation through a distinctly millennial lens
When Foster Dade arrives at Kennedy, an elite boarding school in New Jersey, the year is 2008. Barack Obama begins his first term as president; Vampire Weekend and Passion Pit bump from the newly debuted iPhone; teenagers share confidences and rumors over BlackBerry Messenger and iChat; and the internet as we know it is slowly emerging from its cocoon. So, too, is Foster emerging—a transfer student and anxious young man, Foster is stumbling through adolescence in the wake of his parents’ scandalous divorce. But Foster soon finds himself in the company of Annabeth Whittaker and Jack Albright, the twin centers of Kennedy’s social gravity, who take him under their wing to navigate the cliques and politics of the carelessly entitled.
Eighteen months later, Foster will be expelled, following a tragic scandal that leaves Kennedy and its students irreparably changed. When our nameless narrator inherits Foster’s old dorm room, he begins an epic yearslong investigation into what exactly happened. Through interviews with former classmates, Foster’s blog posts, playlists, and text archives, and the narrator’s own obsessive imagination, a story unfurls—Foster’s, yes, but also one that asks us who owns our personal narratives, and how we shape ourselves to be the heroes or villains of our own stories.
Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos is about privilege and power, the pitfalls of masculinity and its expectations, and, most distinctly, how we create the mythologies that give meaning to our lives. With his debut novel, Nash Jenkins brilliantly captures the emotional intensities of adolescence in the dizzying early years of the twenty-first century.
Helen says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓 1/2
Well this woke me from my reading slump! I needed it after not really connecting with our book choices in May. I am obsessed with this book. I love contemporary fiction and I love books that take place at prep schools. I have never read a book with such keen observational description. It gets a little dark in the second half – resembling a mixture of Bret Easton Ellis (for whom he pays homage) and John Irving novels. You may need to skim some parts – lots of gratuitous teen sex 🫣 . Keep reading though! I don’t want to give anything away, but my takeaway from this book is the old adage – don’t put anything in writing you wouldn’t want the world to know when you are dead. Side note, Nash Jenkins must have scored an 800 on his verbal. His vocabulary is astounding! As my friend Claire Parker said, “His command of the English language is strong”….and that is putting it mildly. I can’t wait to read his next book!
Holly says: 🤓🤓🤓🤓
Sex (alone and in partnerships), Drugs (lots of them) & Rock ‘n Roll (in the form of Ipod playlists) – and angst, lots and lots of angst. I am not sure where to begin, so I’ll start at the end. I thought the last 150 pages of this book were absolutely spectacular! Very moving and quite a surprise. People are talking about this epic first novel from hometown author, Nash Jenkins, and there are lots of different voices, but one consensus is, poor Foster Dade. You will ache for him. He just experiences some awful things and gets caught up in things he cannot control or chooses not to control as he navigates a complicated prep school social scene – he is only 15 after all! This is not an easy read, but I bet you will be compelled to keep turning the pages – and there are a lot of them. This is really an amazing first novel by Nash, who I will now refer to as “boy genius” because I think this book could only come from a brilliant mind – and at such a young age it is astounding. If you read this one, you won’t forget it.
Helen and Holly Hit the Books 