Last month, Ms. Curtis Sittenfeld asked, "If women do indeed have groupies, might I acquire some for myself?" She answered her question's first half on her own: Indeed, they do, especially if the woman author "writes a lot about sex." As for the second half: it's too early to judge, but the NY Observer's review of Prep, Sittenfeld's debut, shows the author trying her best.

Fast-forward to a blowjob ... Surely [Prep's narrator,] Lee isn't the first preppie to suggest that the discomfort of giving one confers "a sort of nobility - a kinship with all the girls who'd done this before." But she may be the first to admit to "an affection for myself for being willing to do it." It's one of the reasons we come to be so fond of Lee and, by extension, Ms. Sittenfeld.

(Have I been getting the two mixed up? Blame the publisher, who made the questionable decision to send out press materials that feature photos of Ms. Sittenfeld's real-life Groton School junior class, and even of her heartthrob - presumably the recipient of her oral largesse.)