Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School

by Michael Leahy

Some seniors at Beverly Hills High School admit to seeing their life's great task as simply holding on. A troubling large segment wonders whether they have the ability to achieve the immense success necessary to remain in Beverly Hills, most openly fearing a life without great advantages or opulence. Professional ambitions, therefore, generally tend to be higher among the young here. A few seniors have already resigned themselves to futures of scaled-down existence, far outside Beverly Hills and the rest of upper-income West Los Angeles. A certain anomie has settled over them. "If it's going to happen when I get older - like not being able to live here and having to live like some geek in the Valley - then it's going to happen," says one girl. "Meantime, I'm going to party all I can. I'm going to go wild while I have something to do it with. Party, party, party. Then the world can collapse."
I realized that , behind the school's gates, lurked a subculture I no longer knew anything about.

Genres: Nonfiction

310 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounding down to 3.

I've wanted to read this book for so many years; it's been so long that I can't even remember where I heard about it. I had a sinking suspicion throughout all the years that this book sat on my TBR: that the experiences of these students would mirror my own high school experience. I got a good deal on it on Thriftbooks last year and I'm just now getting around to reading it.

This book claims to chronicle the lives of 6 high school seniors at Beverly Hills High School during the 1985-86 school year. That is partially true. 6 students are covered, but they are composites of, according to the author, around 80 students that he interviewed. It is understandable that individual stories could not be told in such intimate detail, but it makes me wonder how much of this book was purely fictional.

As someone who attended a high-pressure high school, this book definitely took me back. It's very interesting that things haven't changed much in 35 years, and I doubt now that they ever will. It wasn't an exact parallel, but my early hunch proved to be accurate.

A big issue I had with this book was that all the composites were white, affluent students, which made for a very monolithic profile. According to the data provided by the author (and the "student's" firsthand experiences), there was a significant population of foreign-born students at the school at this time, and it would have been nice to hear their perspective. It's possible that some of the perspectives of a more diverse student group were included, but you wouldn't know it from the composites.

I also wish there was an epilogue where we got to read about the lives of the composite students after high school, and maybe even after their first year of college. But, of course, it would have been very hard to compile the experiences of 80 students at vastly different colleges into 6 neat composites again.

With it being the 80s, there are all types of wild behaviors that the students engage in. I specifically want to provide a trigger warning for the several mentions of statutory rape in this book. Everything is presented as "consentual", but you aren't going to convince me (or a judge) that a 14 or 15 year old can be in a consensual relationship with an adult.

There is also quite a bit of drug and alcohol abuse but considering this book took place in the 80s you could have probably guessed that for yourself. Additionally, an eating disorder is described in methodical detail. Discretion is advised.

This book was good, not great. I don't think this book lived up to all the hype I built up for it, but it was solid overall.

[Katherine Tomlinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The real Beverly Hills 90210.