Plot overview

Characters

• Andy: a slight, nervous boy, sick with the sense that he has fallen hopelessly behind his peers and has already lost the race for good grades, entrance to the top colleges, stature, girls--a future.
• Hillary: an insecure beauty who, though a promising model, feels crowded and dwarfed by Beverly's social extracurricular and academic pressures, not to mention the anxiety generated by her mother's doctor-boyfriend, soon to be a member of their household.
• Steven: a student with aspirations to be a wealthy man and Republican party media consultant--a baby kingmaker--who must first navigate the perilous waters leading toward another semester of A's and, he hopes, an Ivy League college acceptance.
• Kelly: a lonely girl who avoids mirrors and eats most meals alone with her housekeeper, whose principle contact with her real estate agent-mother comes in late-night long-distance phone calls, and whose overwhelming obsession lies in becoming svelte enough to compete with Beverly's nubile social butterflies.
• Paul: an overweight, funny, self-deprecating boy with an enigmatic and troubled best friend and self-absorbed parents who know their son dimly at best.
• Melinda: the model toward which the others aspire; a pleasantly attractive maverick who is academically successful, socially respected, and dependent on no cliques for stature or affection.

Reviews

• Kendall Hailey of the Los Angeles Times
  Los Angeles Times
  The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
  
  : "Michael Leahy
  Michael Leahy
  Michael Leahy is an author and award-winning writer for The Washington Post and The Washington Post Magazine. He is best known for his second book, When Nothing Else Matters, which chronicles basketball superstar Michael Jordan's last comeback to the NBA...
  
  's 'Hard Lessons: Senior Year at Beverly Hills High School' traces the last year in the high school careers of six very different seniors. Extensive interviews were conducted with many Beverly Hills High School seniors, and all the book derives from real-life experience. However, for anonymity's sake, the six seniors we follow are all composite characters, and the book reads like a novel. Quite a trick considering the author had to work exclusively with the truth. As Evelyn Waugh said: 'A writer has to modify truth to make it plausible.'"