I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel

"Wolfe's books are usually more about setting than character, but Charlotte's delicately drawn highs and lows give the book an unexpectedly tender heart....[A] rich, wise, absorbing and irresistible novel. Wolfe does things with words--exhilarating, intoxicating, impossible things--that no other writer can do....I AM CHARLOTTE SIMMONS will get attention for the smutty scenes, of which there are a generous but judicious number...But Wolfe's interest is not prurient. His real subject is the nature of identity, of the individual soul (Charlotte's in particular), and whether or not it can survive uncorrupted in the acid storm of sex and alcohol and power and peer pressure into which we ritually plunge our young in the name of higher education. The answer he arrives at is not simple. Some get their comeuppance in Charlotte Simmons, and some are redeemed, but Charlotte's fate is a surprise, and not everybody will find it a pleasant one. Wolfe may be getting old, but he's not getting soft."Tom Wolfe is the author of 'I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel', published 2004 under ISBN 9781593975203 and ISBN 1593975201.