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| Restless Virgins: Love, Sex, and Survival in Prep School | 
 enlarge | Authors: Abigail Jones, Marissa Miley
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $7.68
You Save: $6.27 (45%)
New (44) Used (19) from $2.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 64225
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0061192066
Dewey Decimal Number: 300
EAN: 9780061192067
ASIN: 0061192066
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Expedited shipping is not available for this item. Items are mailed via USPS media mail within 2 business days and should arrive 4-14 business days later.
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Product Description
Established in 1798, Milton Academy had always had a proud history of achievement, integrity, and pride—until a sex scandal rocked the campus and made headlines in the spring of 2005. Written by two Milton graduates who know this world—and these students—like no others, Restless Virgins follows a group of seniors who were there as the "incident" (as it came to be called) unfolded. Startling, riveting, important, and true, it offers an honest, intimate look at the real lives of today's teens—an eye-opening yet sensitive depiction of normal kids with normal struggles that no teen, parent, or educator can afford to ignore.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 37 more reviews...
 Terrible Writing August 31, 2007
23 out of 27 found this review helpful
Let's be honest, it's easy to make fun of prep schools. Unfortunately this book is a really lousy read, and completely unenlightening. If it's based on a true school as it says, then the authors have no one to blame but themselves for the weak character development and canned 'insights'. I was definitely disappointed and wouldn't recommend it - whether or not you liked "Prep" or prep schools.
Don't waste your time August 28, 2007
20 out of 35 found this review helpful
While this book purports to be a conversation starter, to open up a dialogue about the lives of teenagers today, it is anything but. Unfortunately, the teenagers who they focus on teach an important lesson, but one which should make parents cringe. A few relationship mis-steps and a little promiscuity in high school is not the end of the world. Nor is it new. These students grew and learned from their misdeeds, and ended up at Ivy League colleges. The only people to whom this book will be of value is the few students who agreed to be interviewed and their parents. For the students interviewed, this book provides an important and basic lesson. Don't talk to strangers. Especially if those strangers are hoping to use you to bounce them into fifteen minutes of fame. For their parents, the book provides what every parent really wants - a rundown of everything their kids were doing while they were in high school. As a Milton Academy graduate, I am not ashamed of the choices these students made. I am ashamed that the authors could not offer anything more valuable than this book.
Not the Milton I know September 2, 2007
20 out of 33 found this review helpful
As the parent of a Milton student I was anxious to see what this was all about. Don't waste your money, we all already know the over analyzed story of the "hockey scandal", this book has opportunistically created a fictitious story around what we all have already read in the newspapers. There may be elements of truth that made it into this story but the names (and all other identifying information) have been changed to protect the "innocent". I am not naive, I have no doubt that many sexual incidents happen at high schools everywhere (and probably moreso at boarding schools) but the impression that all these students live for is sex, sex, sex is completely distorted. My daughter and her friends don't hook up and don't obsess about the next time they will have sex. They are far too busy working hard at school. The authors have slandered their alma mater in a way that only makes me think that they had some huge ax to grind. Beyond the obvious trashing this does to the reputation of their school it also shows the authors to be very poor writers. It is hard to believe that their Milton writing background (which in my experience generally produce excellent writers), their Ivy League educations, their advanced writing programs and their affiliation with the Atlantic haven't taught them the basics of journalistic writing. In addition the book is very poorly structured, did anyone proof read this and notice the redundancy of some of the phrasing as well as some very obvious "mega blunders" (a Milton description of tricky grammatical errors). As a mother I think these girls should be ashamed of themselves for biting the hand that fed them and on top of it doing it so poorly.
Embarrassed for the authors... September 5, 2007
18 out of 28 found this review helpful
As a graduate of Milton Academy in the mid nineties and someone who managed to balance parties on Cape Cod and Beacon Hill with hard study time, i couldn't resist taking a look at Restless Virgins. I borrowed a copy from a friend and read the first 50 pages or so before promptly losing interest. Its a boring, unstructured narrative with no active dialogue that doesn't draw the reader in at all. The characters are unsympathetic and feel underdeveloped.
Also, It's obvious the inexperience of the authors. I didn't need to know them in order to see how much of themselves they project into the text. It's sad how focused they are on on body parts and sexuality, as if these were the only things high school kids think about, not ideas, or art, or literature, or anything besides pussy and dick which is anything but true ESPECIALLY at Milton.
Perhaps the authors are somehow are living vicariously or experiencing titillation in the act of writing the text which they were unable to access during their time as Milton students? That's how it comes across.
Last of all it's just a cheap read. The authors insert various examples/ names that made me cringe with embarrassment for them. I think that embarrassment was by far the overarching feeling i was left with in putting this book down. This is not our Milton and something tells me it isn't an accurate slice of today's Milton either but some warped rendition by two repressed, undersexed and vaguely sexist ex-DSGs playing sociologue...
Hello, Dishonesty! August 29, 2007
16 out of 38 found this review helpful
This is an untruthful, exaggerated portrayal of what seems to be nothing more than high school antics. Each character has been dragged down into some sort of stereotype, and frankly no one can fit a single stereotype that completely. Child's play. Don't waste your time, and don't let your kids read it. You won't find it at all captivating, and you don't want your kids to think that this pathetic, exaggerated excuse for a book is what high school is really like.
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