I was taken with the need to read this book the first time I glanced at a review of it in “More” magazine’s March or April issue.  Then, strangely enough, a friend recommended this book to me in June.  I went back to the original review – yes, I keep tear outs from magazines when I know there is a book I MUST read.

I started diligently looking for the book.  I knew I could order it online but wanted to purchase it locally.  I had been in a neighboring town and checked their local bookstore.  I went to the extremely large Barnes & Noble.  I went to the rather small Waldenbooks.  No one in the area had the book in stock.  Summer started and I put it on the back burner.  I still wanted to read it but I was done looking for it.  The book would wait.

I finally had some extra cash.  With summers being a slow work time, a new book is not always in the budget.  I went ahead and order Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz (ISBN 978-0-446-54070-4) online.  I was in the middle of something else when the book arrived but quickly, after reading a page or two, set the other book aside and delved into Admission.

Outwardly about the college admissions process, this novel takes the reader through the travel season, the hectic reading season and then delves into the personal life of protagonist and admissions officer Portia Nathan.  The book is divided into four parts but that is not truly important except for Part Three as this part goes back in time in the life of Portia Nathan.

The entire book is foreshadowed in one line of the fourth chapter.  “Admission.  It’s what we let in, but it’s also what we let out.”  With the background of the novel an Ivy League university, it is telling that more than one definition of the title, as a word, weaves itself throughout the book.

By the end of the book, having related rather closely to Portia Nathan throughout it, I was emotionally drained.  I am not sure how she managed to not have a nervous breakdown somewhere in the middle of the book as I am not sure any real person has the strength of Korelitz’s protagonist.

While a fiction work, I believe that every parent who is trying to help a child get into college, every high school guidance counselor and every college admissions officer should pick up this book and read it.  Parts of it are so true, even though fiction – the admissions process, the portrayal of the overachieving parent.  Admission is well worth the time it will take to read it.