I Am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe

Not Wolfe's most impressive novel, but definitely his best orchestrated one. Every novel he has done has dealt with a scope and frame that was too large for him to wheel all the way. I Am Charlotte Simmons is very good and the end hits the right note for all the characters. The other note about this novel is that as much as everything about college life seems exagerated, it isn't. I read this before I went to live in a college dorm and my instinct was to second guess every idea and claim in the book, but Wolfe turned out to be accurate to an uncomfortable degree. For a writer who steps into other worlds with his novels, accuracy is an important element.