Everything Looks Impressive — Hugh Kennedy

Everything Looks Impressive is a knowing, smart look at college life today, showing the battles young people are fighting during the “happiest years of their lives.” 

Yale: an Ivy League bastion of privilege, a breeding ground of America's elite. Here you are the clique you belong to, as demonstrated by the clothes you wear and the drugs you prefer. Here everything, including sex, has been politicized.

Where does Alex MacDonald, fresh from a small blue-collar town in Maine, fit into all of this? He isn't sure. He'd like to win the favor of Jill Lanigan, but her tastes seem to run to her own sex. And he'd like to connect with preppie roommate Brook Morehouse, but he's troubled by Brook's superficial values. And when the tension among these antagonistic campus groups turns bitter in the wake of a violent party in which both Jill and Brook are involved, Alex begins to question where his loyalties lie.

Hugh Kennedy's debut is fresh and full of news about contemporary youth, a coming-of-age novel that ranks with the classics This Side of Paradise, Catcher in Rye, and Bright Lights, Big City.