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I Am Charlotte Simmons
by Tom Wolfe

6.0 based on 27 reviews read critic reviews how did we calculate this? based on 29 votes read user comments rate this book

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'Bonfire Of The Vanities' author Tom Wolfe chronicles the lives, loves, parties and scandals of students and faculty at the fictional Dupont University in his latest novel. Wolfe, now 74, spent several years researching the book at various universities across the country.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 688 pages
11/09/2004
$28.95

ISBN: 0374281580

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

PopMatters Stephen M. Deusner

More than a trifle but less than a masterpiece, the novel is an entertainment, and as such it seeks first to amuse and second to inform.

Wall Street Journal Harvey C. Mansfield

Social satire is everywhere evident, but there is a sober theme, too, and it is very much worth paying attention to.

The Independent Cal McCrystal

So this novel is both an excoriation and a lament. It is a good read, cleverly constructed.

Washington Post Michael Dirda

So: sermon, melodrama, dystopian vision -- I Am Charlotte Simmons partakes of all these, and does so stunningly. But it's still as much polemic as novel. One closes the book feeling soiled by its cloacal vision and emotionally manipulated by its author.

Chicago Tribune Julia Keller

The novel is overgrown (676 pages) and galumphing and flawed but basically good-hearted, which is to say that it resembles the very adolescents the author tries to paint in this novel.

Publishers Weekly

Wolfe's promising setup never leads to a deeper contemplation of race, sex or general hierarchies. Instead, there is a virtual recitation of facts, albeit colorful ones, with little social insight beyond the broadly obvious. [8 Nov 2004, p.35]

Salon Priya Jain

The only real novelty in "I Am Charlotte Simmons" is that it was written by someone as removed from the college scene as Tom Wolfe. In the details of the scenery, we're glad to have his stranger's eyes, rendering sharp observations about things we've seen perhaps too often to really notice.... But Wolfe's big revelations -- that college is really all about sex, and that prudery rarely survives social pressure -- are anything but.

Daily Telegraph George Walden

There is plenty of entertainment, but the emphasis on Charlotte's inner torment is such that we sometimes feel she is a pill, whose dominance of the novel inhibits Wolfe's humour.

Daily Telegraph Lewis Jones

If it shares some Dickensian virtues, such as exuberant, lovingly crafted grotesquery, it also has Dickensian vices, such as long-windedness, and a fundamentally unbelievable heroine.

LA Weekly Brendan Bernhard

For most readers Simmons will stand or fall on whether they find reading 676 pages about contemporary college life, in all its drunken, sex-crazed, nerdy and frat-boy manifestations, worth their time. After all, you need only to watch five minutes of MTV Spring Break to get the general idea.

Los Angeles Times Francine Prose

Of course, to remark that Wolfe's characters seem a bit broad and cartoonish is rather like complaining that Balzac's characters seem preoccupied with money. But too many false notes and nagging questions of authenticity can pull us out from the novel just when we are most engrossed. [7 Nov 2004, p.R3]

The Economist

Mr Wolfe's gifts for sartorial detail, verbal tics and all the tiny gestures that define place in the social pecking order are on hyperkinetic, at times tiresome, display.

The New York Times Book Review Jacob Weisberg

Like everything Wolfe writes, ''I Am Charlotte Simmons'' grabs your interest at the outset and saps the desire to do anything else until you finish. That said, it is by far the weakest of his novels.

The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray

It's shocking how much of Charlotte Simmons is inelegantly written.... But Charlotte Simmons is far from the washout some have made it out to be.

The Spectator Sam Leith

His pages throng with -- sometimes entertainingly, sometimes tediously -- burlesqued but recognisable types. He tells us what we already know, but tells us it more loudly.

Village Voice Joy Press

With I Am Charlotte Simmons, Wolfe continues the painful process of eroding his hard-earned reputation as a cultural arbiter.

The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Lynn Crosbie

The problem is that Wolfe, whose writing has always been grossly adjectival and chic-specific, has failed to capture any news of interest about American youth, and comes off instead like one of those horrible professors who tried to make you listen to Imagine while simultaneously getting off on his status as a pedagogical errant. [4 Dec 2004, p.D6]

The Guardian Blake Morrison

He tells us little or nothing we didn't already know.

Boston Globe Richard Eder

The proportion of rant overload to silky observation has much increased.

San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen

The book defies credibility, taste and the remotest semblance of subtlety.

The New York Times Michiko Kakutani

Though Mr. Wolfe tries to gussy things up with his hyperventilated prose and a noisy arsenal of narrative bells and whistles, most of his observations will be overwhelmingly familiar to anyone who has been to college, sent children to college or gone to the movies.

Houston Chronicle Nora Seton

What's missing is a real experience. When Wolfe does chance to sentimentalize or search a character, the moment feels lumpy and awkward.

London Review Of Books Theo Tait

Bloody awful.... Charlotte Simmons resembles a very bad Oliver Stone film. Unfortunately, at 676 pages, it lasts considerably longer.

Chicago Sun-Times Henry Kisor

A painfully disappointing novel.

Christian Science Monitor Ron Charles

This isn't the anthropology of the Ordinary - a potentially revelatory approach; it's just a dramatization of clichés.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Far, far too much of the book is propped up by the author's harrumphing-Humberty shock.

New York Review Of Books Daniel Mendelsohn

A failure it is: bloated, schematic, heavy-handed, and, it must be said, boring; impotent in its attempts to suggest a lived reality... and, oddest of all, flaccid as social satire.

The average user rating for this book is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

B faste gave it a1:
A disappointing disaster of a book. And that is being kind. Someone mentioned that people of generation x will "get" this novel. I speak for those of generation x who find this novel contrived and silly. The characters are unlikable and worse, unbelievable especially the title character Charlotte Simmons. She comes off as a naive and pathetic screw-up who may be book smart but has no common sense. Anyone who was in a challenging pre-med program or a gruelling engineering program will definitely not agree with the author's viewpoint that all students these days are lazy slackers.

Nanette B gave it an8:
Somehow the stereotypes and the crude language and even the lack of news in this novel did not make it any less compulsive reading for me. Tom Wolfe walks ground that is painfully familiar, but describes it in a level of vivid detail that will resurrect uncomfortable memories for almost anyone who ever went to a four year college, and (I think unfortunately) fill the breasts of everyone else with righteous disgust. He has a point of view, and it is that of Thomas Hardy in Tess of the D'Urbervilles: "Hey folks- something is terribly wrong here!" Physical disorder and uncleanliness, closely depicted in the coed dormitories and the off-campus student housing, stands in for what the author perceives as rampant materialism and self-gratification spoiling the lives of otherwise promising young people. The effect on the students of this hedonistic and brutally hierarchical culture is to deprive them of all fellow-feeling. The central sex act in the novel , which is described with clinical accuracy and no sentiment whatever, allows the reader to experience the detached, depersonalized perspective of the victim, and to follow her into a subsequent crippling depression. This scene in itself was a stunning achievement, and proves that Mr. Wolfe could not have written this novel out of envy or prurience as suggested by some reviewers. There are inaccuracies, and there are exaggerations, mostly for comic effect. The most anachronistic part of the book is the remarkable absence of computers, except at the very end where emails play a decisive role in wrapping up the plot. Undergraduates have access to their friends not only through telephone calls but also through online social networking, instant messaging and blogs. Another issue is the resolution of the plot, which seems to leave Charlotte at least conscious of a decision she has made to pay less attention to her grades and her future, and more attention to what really motivates her in her new environment. That she is not happy is manifestly due to the understanding from her mother and teacher that she is expected to achieve academically and no other goal will suffice. There is a whole story there that is never really explored. Despite these quibbles, there is much truth in Wolfe's acidic prose and much that will survive the first round of critics.

Harry M gave it a9:
Having been an administrator at Yale for 10 years, I can assure you that this novel is extremely authentic in its portrayal of modern campus life. Charlotte's character was very real to me, and her torment and depression had an osmotic quality. The fact that not everyone uses high intellect for a high purpose may upset some, but Charlotte's decisions and direction reflects a truer arc, as she chooses American Idol over Charlie Rose.

DeVan P gave it a10:
Any member of Generation X to the present generation of up and coming college students will GET this book, identifying with it. Yes, Wolfe captures the current campus attitude very accurately. So accurately, in fact, you would think he's hosting frat parties to this very day.

Joeythunders G gave it a2:
This book wouldn't even be acceptable if the byline said "Jackie Collins". One dimensional characters; forced, predictable diallogue, and worst of all: a constant self awareness and odor of self importance you cannot escape while you read it. But it breaks open these hot stories: College kids drink and have sex. There are social and societal pressures on young people. Children can grow up to have contempt for thier parents and the way they were raised. Athletes sometimes don't have to do thier homework. And some people are hypocrites! Alert the media! Stick to Wolfe's non-fiction.

Roy C gave it a0:
This book is trash. I bought a hard copy and destroyed it before anyone else had to put up with the filth.

Chelsea gave it a5:
I felt that Wolfe tried too hard to describe a world he doesn't belong in. So many reviews commend him for accurately describing the college life. But essentially he is sterotyping - real college life isn't nearly as scandalous and fairytale-like.

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