ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool

Cooper’s chronicle of eight Walter Payton College Prep students during senior year is full of high-school archetypes. There’s Yale-bound, perfectionist soccer star Emily; coffee-guzzling, insomniac musician Zaf, and impeccably dressed future politician Daniel. But Cooper’s abundant use of detail gives ridiculous/hilarious/terrible/cool life and energy, and prevents the characters from becoming clichés.

Throughout, the book revels in the myopic self-absorption so common among high-school students. Anais, a dedicated ballet dancer, calls choosing between two top-notch university dance conservatories, “the hardest decision of my life.” Previously the author and illustrator of children’s books and nonfiction essays inspired by his own daughters, Cooper’s empathy for the teenagers’ sloppy emotional and social lives can be cringe-inducing. And his bald prose frequently degenerates into awkward analogy (talking about a new boyfriend, Maya “the actress” turns “a color not unlike the pink on the label of her water bottle.”).

But, there’s honesty in these depictions. In an epilogue, Cooper revisits the students six months later. We still see them struggling but waking up and slowly taking control. All of which makes the book compelling the way so many actual teenagers are—frustrating and full of gaps and triviality. And, as Cooper proves, we can’t get enough of teenage dram.