The college experience has always been a popular premise for a lot of novels, but Penelope is one of the more clever and funny takes on it that I’ve read.

Here’s the publisher’s description:

When Penelope O’Shaunessy, “an incoming freshman of average height and lank hair” steps into Harvard Yard for the first time she has lots of advice from her mother: “Don’t be too enthusiastic, don’t talk to people who seem to be getting annoyed, and for heaven’s sake, stop playing Tetris on your phone at part More...

Get this book the fuck out of my life.

I made it 80 pages—80 pages of aimless meandering, 80 pages of uninteresting descriptions, 80 pages of the worst stilted dialogue (she doesn't use contractions! "Wow, that is awesome. It is hard to make mix tapes."), 80 pages of wondering if the main character is autistic or just completely unrealistically obtuse, 80 pages of waiting for SOMETHING to happen.

And then I got to this:

"Isn't that kind of like Marathon Man or something?" She started laughing he More...

I'm uncertain as to what this book was aspiring to be, and it read as if the author was as ill-equipped to answer that question as I was. It seemed to walk an uneasy line between satire and a more sincere novel, somehow succeeding as neither. I didn't find it incisive, witty or clever enough to qualify as a satire (or at least not an effective one), but nor was it nuanced enough to work as a resonant tale about a girl's transformative---or even moderately interesting---first year at Harvard. It More...

"Brilliantly funny? Unique? Refreshing?"
Please.

It took me days to finish this book. I usually give up on books when 1/3 through nothing is happening, but for the life of me, I don't know why I kept coming back to this dud.

I'm convinced that there was something wrong with Penelope. Or was this book supposed to be satirical humour? Did I miss something?

She was a dull kid who had NO interesting quality about her, a girl who seemed to be a blank canvas and had no ideas of her own, a girl who let peo More...

Not sure why I invested the time to read this - the main character is more painful to follow than sticking needles in your eyeballs.

What was this? Who were these people? Was I not supposed to like a single character in the book? Because I didn't.

The author very rarely used contractions. It made the dialogue stilted, but in a really odd way. I couldn't tell if it was intentional or if it's an author affectation. Either way, it was distracting.

I found it odd that Penelope, who is the antithesis of a joiner and who doesn't seem to know what she likes and dislikes, could have even gotten into Harvard. I didn't go there, but it c More...

This review originally appeared at www.readinasinglesitting.com.

I used to run a blog called Misapostrophication. In large part it was a catalogue of the terrible ways in which apostrophes were misused, mostly by cafe owners who laboured under some sort of egalitarian punctuation ideal where every word had a right to an apostrophe. Now, having trudged through Rebecca Harrington's Penelope I'm of a mind to propose a systemic redistribution of apostrophes. I doubt very much that something like "fre More...

I really tried to like this book. Like Rebecca Harrington, I went to Harvard, studied history and literature, and worked on the Harvard Crimson. Plus, I loved the Veritas waffles depicted on the cover of this book (which the dining halls would serve every Sunday).

If you went to Harvard, you will read the book with pangs of recognition (the author refers to numerous Harvard classes, dormitories, and extracurriculars by name). But the characters are practically unrecognizable to me. Every characte More...

This book has laugh-out-loud, funny moments that I really enjoyed. Apart from that, I felt disconnected with the whole story.

Penelope is right. She really is boring. She says weird things that I enjoyed at first and then got tired of it later. She's always pushed around! Why? She always resists and she never stands for herself. Through the course of the whole novel I thought that she would stand up for herself and grow a spine but she didn't grow. It's just like she's describing what happened to More...

This is an enjoyable satire of Harvard and its Ivy League and uber entitled students. Penelope is a middle class oddball who recounts her freshman year at the big H. Penelope is completely out of touch with the elitist atmosphere of Harvard, whether it be academic or class elitism. She is a fish out of water and her mother is constantly nagging her to "join things" so she can find some friends. Penelope does connect somewhat reluctantly with some of her dorm mates and manages to get dragged in t More...

This was a light, fun read, a satire of life on the college campus. It's not a serious read, it's not going to make you ponder life's great lessons, but I found that I really connected with the socially awkward Penelope who never seemed to click with college life.

As a satire, the kids are extreme versions of themselves. Penelope is on one hand frustrating as she allows others to push her around, yet she's clearly an intelligent self-assured kid on so many other levels that she doesn't come off More...

This is the perfect summer beach read. If you're looking for something with depth and meaning, this is not the book, but if you want a stylish quick reading that perfectly captures its main character's voice, this is the one. The book remined me a lot of the style of a Wes Andersen movie, with all the characters speaking in short, clipped, simple but witty sentences. Penelope is hopelessly confused and compliant in how she deals with her life and social interactions. She doesn't say what she thi More...

I went into reading this book with an open mind. Sure, I wasn't socially awkward and incapable of making friends in college, but I did have some issues that I had to adapt to and that is entirely what I expected of Penelope. I expected her to adapt. She didn't. She spends the entire novel getting steamrolled over by her "friends" and her mother--she never stands up for herself or disagrees vehemently with anyone, she just gives up and acquiesces, every SINGLE TIME.

I'm finding this disturbing the More...

I don't remember the subject of my college application essay; if I had to hazard a guess, it was likely about overcoming something that probably didn't really need to be overcome, like long division. However, I don't think I will ever forget what Penelope O'Shaunessy wrote her college application about (a car seat), or the fictional character she has a crush on (Hercule Poiroit), or her favorite pastime at parties (playing Tetris on her phone). Because Penelope O'Shaunessy, the titular heroine o More...

The best campus novel since Lucky Jim, and the first truly great novel of the 21st century (I am not exaggerating), a pitch-perfect satire on a level of quality I have not read since Evelyn Waugh. Hilarious and modern, Penelope is both contemporary and classic, a novel that could only have been written now, but will reverberate with readers for years to come. This is not just a book for the college-educated. Anyone coming-of-age in this world, where the absurdities and lunacies of adult life hav More...

Review Score: 4 stars out of 5

Dislikes : This book started off kind of slow and it the pace and interest, for me at least, didn't pick up a little until near the middle to the end. The first few chapters were long and it took a while to get through. There were a few cases to where quotation marks were left off characters sentences but that didn't bother too much

Likes : I liked a lot things about this book. First of all, I did enjoy the main character; it took a while to do due to the slowness o More...

My college had its freshman orientation over one weekend in the summer, and they had it in waves according to where you fell in the alphabet. You showed up, took your placement exams, met with an advisor, planned your schedule, and then stayed in the dorms to socialize with soon-to-be fellow classmates. It was snack-sized college experence, in preparation for the big collegiate candy bar that, I assumed, would be chockablock with exciting Nuts of Life Experience. (If you are allergic to nuts, th More...

Never judge a book by its cover. I saw the cover of this book advertised on Goodreads, which features a waffle with the Harvard insignia in the center, and thought it would be a fun, light read that would let me reminisce about my time at Harvard. Waffles in the dining hall were a special Sunday treat that my friends and I loved, and that memory motivated me to get this book from the library. Oh boy. I knew it was going to be bad after the first 10 pages, but I persevered.

Penelope is the most bo More...

You know when you get a new pop CD and you put it in and it's fun, it's catchy, and you can't seem to stop listening to it over and over again. But then you know you should probably listen to that new indie record that you've had your eye on for awhile. You know it will be quality music and mean something more than that pop CD you've been listening to on repeat, so you give the indie a listen and really like it, but then the next day you've the pop CD back in the player? This book is a little li More...

Well. This wasn't the best way to start off the year, book-wise. From the description on the back and various blurbs, I thought this would be right up my alley - sort of in the new "New Adult" genre. Even though I didn't go to college and am now over a decade older than college-age, I have a soft spot for books set on campus. However...I don't even know what the deal is with this author, not to mention all of the editors and folks and the publishing house who must have read/worked on it. I reall More...

Note: I received a complimentary advance copy of Penelope to review.

Penelope is a socially awkward young woman who begins her first year at Harvard. This is Penelope's story of trying to fit in.

While there are some issues that are specific to Harvard, most of the book could be representative of any college, or in some cases, even high school. There are a lot of relationship, social and academic issues that are not necessarily unique to any school.

I was thinking that maybe this book should be re More...

Are you sick of reading books about where the college students head off to College and are perfect and fall in love with hunky guys and all is merry with them as they skip along their ways ? Then you need to read Penelope which stars Penelope, a normal Plain Jane type of girl who is somewhat of a loner and doesn't know exactly what she wants from her life. Penelope follows well... Penelope through her freshman year of college at Harvard where she meets her roommates, gets hit on by several guys More...

Penelope O'Shaughnessy is a quirk of a girl; she still harbours her childhood crush on Hercule Poirot, prefers playing Tetris on her phone to social encounters, feels a spiritual kinship with Whitney Houston and knows Morse code by heart. It’s no wonder her mother is concerned that Penelope is now a freshman at Harvard; where she’ll have to share a dorm with other girls, make new friends and generally ‘interact’. . . so she gives Penelope the advice to be herself (but not too much).

Now Penelope More...

*Received through a goodreads giveaway*

Penelope is an allright novel. The word quirky kept flashing through my mind as I read it. The coming of age story about Penelope and her first year at Harvard. She's weird, ackward, and quirky. She's not cool and at times it's as if she socially has no clue. Initially Penelope just seemed to go with the flow of things. She wandered around aimlessly with the small circle she didn't even really like. And I think most people do that when they initially step o More...

I'm sort of in love with this book. I even braved looking like a crazy person on public transit while reading this book. Although, perhaps it's more a comment on myself, but I'm not certain that Penelope is as awkward as others seem to believe. Sure, she's silly, insecure, and at the same time opinionated, but that hardly makes her any more awkward than any 18-year-olds I've ever known.

The humor is a bit on the dry side, and the character studies are rather dead-on, even if sometimes over the to More...

I admit, the book itself was incredibly addicting; I completed it within a day. I do acknowledge the fact that Penelope is portrayed as a socially awkward, naive character. But by the end of the novel, I was literally counting down how many times Penelope replied with "OK"s and "I don't know"s, which turned out to be incredibly distracting. Is Penelope incapable of expressing emotion, or does she not have a personality altogether? I saw growth in neither Penelope nor any of the other minor chara More...

Penelope was a book I had been eagerly awaiting. I love books about university life, from The Red Book to I Am Charlotte Simmons. I had the date of release marked in my diary and bought it the moment I saw it in the bookshop. I loved the birds on the front cover; the cat I’m not so sure about, as it turns out that Penelope is allergic to cats. That was my first warning that this book wasn’t going to be the voyage of liberation and self-discovery that I’d thought.

Let’s start from the start. Penel More...