Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos

Jenkins debuts with a capable if overlong story of a New Jersey boarding school scandal. An unnamed narrator recounts the disastrous education of fellow student Foster Dade, who enrolled at Kennedy School 11 years earlier, in 2008. After a doctor prescribes Adderall and Vyvanse for Foster’s panic attacks, he sells the pills to his classmates. Dealing drugs provides Foster with access to the school’s inner circle, which includes Jack Albright and Annabeth Whittaker. Foster is attracted to Annabeth, but she couples up with Jack, and Foster romances another student. When Foster is caught kissing Annabeth, he is exiled from the elites, and things get worse with the death of one of Foster’s clients and a vicious Facebook chat thread. The prose sometimes thuds (“I covet a wistfulness that was foreclosed to me” the narrator suggests), but stylistic flourishes in the form of playlists, legal papers, and entries from Foster’s blog provide a convincing if overloaded panorama of the school’s microcosm. Some purple prose aside, Jenkins proves to be a keen world builder and a mostly engaging raconteur. Agent: Sloan Harris and Julie Flanagan, CAA. (May)