The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

As a boarding school fable, THE DISREPUTABLE HISTORY OF FRANKIE LANDAU-BANKS works pretty well. As a grrrl power social manifesto, not so much. Lockhart seems to be grasping for a Message -- she throws in class lectures, P.G. Wodehouse, and one of Frankie's papers on the Cacophony Society -- but never follows through with Frankie actually doing anything that matters. An omniscient narrator informs readers of Frankie's deviousness, but Frankie's achievements are putting bras on school portraits, sitting at the senior table when she's a sophomore (gasp), and making up words (a self-conscious, albeit whimsical, mannerism that undermines her insistence that people take her seriously).

Enjoy this for its clever dialog (a New York boy insists any pizza outside city limits be renamed a DOD -- disk of dough), elaborate pranks, and occasional psychological insights. By the end, though, readers may feel like that boy eating a non-New York pizza: not quite satisfied.