College for Parents: Charlotte

Yes, I read Wolfe's book, and yes, it should be mandatory for parents-of-college-freshmen.

I was reminded of it by this article.

...the same public that devoured Wolfe's other novels resisted Charlotte for another reason: because middle-aged readers, many of them parents, found the book's truth-telling about what their daughters and sons on campus are really up to simply unbearable. They're not alone. “Every Saturday night,” confided a friend whose daughter was a freshman last year, “I'd think of her and worry about what she might be doing at college – and then I'd purposefully put the whole thing out of my head.” She – and a few million other mothers and fathers, too.

(I still think that Bonfire was a better book, regardless.)