I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of this book. There's something about the cruelty of school girls that makes for captivating reading. The prose was really intriguing--detailed, but not too detailed, and though the book was almost 500 pages, it read quickly. There was something almost... ominous about the air of the book. However, I was much less interested once she graduated high school. Something about her just-married struggling-artist troubles didn't connect with me. But I liked reading about grown-up, in her sixties or late fifties Elaine.