100 books like Small Admissions

When we set out on our writing journey to understand the impacts of college admissions anxiety on families, friendships, students, and school communities, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life, by William Deresiewicz, was one of the most insightful books we read. Deresiewicz does an outstanding job of tracing the history of the college admissions industrial complex, including the fascinating story behind the US News & World Report rankings, as well as the impact of airline deregulation and the break-up of Ma Bell on college admissions. If you’re trying to make sense of college admissions mania, this book is a great starting point.

Let me start by saying I adore every book by bestselling author Jennifer Belle, from her debut, Going Down, to her latest, The Seven-Year Bitch. Belle is witty, wonderful, and truly New York, New York. Here I will discuss High Maintenance, her top-of-the-charts, five-star love story between a woman—and an apartment. Protagonist Liv Kellerman is engrossing. Upon leaving her husband and a fabulous penthouse, Liv relocates to a hovel in Greenwich Village that is certainly from the “beat” generation. In her efforts to be top floor again, she becomes a realtor in the cutthroat Manhattan market. You won’t want to put this one down.

I want to go to the Catskills with Elyssa Friedland. I need to do some dirty dancing and eat until I can’t eat anymore. Not this weekend. But maybe back in 1970. I just know Elyssa and I would have a fabulous time. The best I can do now is to recommend Elyssa’s charming book, Last Summer at the Golden Hotel. I laughed and so will you when you read about one family’s effort to save their ramshackle Catskills hotel.

Boris Fishman made his debut with the story of Salva, a journalist for a long famous magazine asked to forge Holocaust-restitution claims—by and for his grandfather, a Russian immigrant living in South Brooklyn. Soon Salva achieves the American dream—a something from nothing business writing false claims.  It seems there’s a neighborhood full of people who can use his writing services. I loved this novel, a tender and wise study in the meaning of family, loyalty, and justice. Tragedy meets comedy in A Replacement Life.

My family loves to laugh, and we introduce our children to books that build the funny bone. For this reason, I have a copy of every picture book written by the delightful Mo Willems. Hands down, my favorite is Let’s Go for a Drive! Here’s the story: Elephant and Piggie amass the accessories necessary to spend a day tooling around town. We’re talking sunglasses, a map, an umbrella. They are set to go when they realize they don’t have a car. Somehow, the two friends make the best of it. Good news: There are 25 Elephant and Piggie books to enjoy again and again.

This well-researched non-fiction book by powerhouse investigative reporter Nicole LaPorte of Fast Company provides a fascinating look at some of the behind-the-scenes, real-world parenting dynamics that set the stage for Operation Varsity Blues. In addition to all the juicy details LaPorte reveals about Los Angeles’ elite private school ecosystem, we particularly love the way she traces the origins of college admissions mania all the way back to kindergarten. If you’ve ever wondered how community group-think can lead to lawlessness and a total abandonment of ethics and values, Guilty Admissions takes readers on a tantalizing journey into the competitive-parenting abyss, LA-style.

Holsinger’s debut novel was published in 2019, only a few months after the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal burst into public view, capturing the attention of a horrified nation. While The Gifted School tells the story of four friends in Colorado as their children are applying (and the parents jockeying) for admission to a middle school for gifted and talented students, the parenting mania themes are cut from the same cloth. With humor and wisdom, Holsinger deftly handles the intricacies and dynamics within and across each of the four families. The twists and turns are surprising, the characters extremely well-drawn, and readers are guaranteed to cringe as the parents in the story make one bad decision after another, suffering under—and ultimately succumbing to—the weight of their anxieties. Delicious fun!

This is an engrossing novel with big ripped-from-the-headlines vibes. Told from the point of view of high school senior Chloe Berringer, whose Lori Loughlin-like actress mother becomes ensnared in a college admissions scandal, Buxbaum’s story expertly imagines the impact of such a scandal might have on a young college applicant and her family. Using a Now/Then format, Buxbaum’s juicy and compelling story provides a many-layered and fascinating peek under the veil of one family’s secrets and lies in the name of Operation-Varsity-Blues-style ambition. And although Admission was originally classified as a Young Adult novel, we feel confident recommending it to adults as well. In fact, it would make for an excellent mother-daughter “buddy read!”

An audaciously experimental novelist, Siri Hustvedt is also a highly respected scholar of neuroscience who is not afraid to bring the philosophy of mind into her fiction. In Memories of the Future, she adroitly employs some revisionist art history as well. And there is a breathtakingly vivid evocation of the sensory lag that occurs with trauma. But what grabbed me first and unrelentingly in this novel is its evocation of a time and place—New York in the 1970s (the then scruffy Upper West Side, to be exact)—and of the social and sexual perplexities it produced for young women. The protagonist negotiates independence and loneliness, courage—and memory—both true and false, and men safe and otherwise. I wish I’d known her then. 

This is the first book I remember reading where I learned you could write about yourself in a way that was glittery, funny, and immersive without being pretentious.

Gilman is a master of voice and narrative, plus the majority of the book–subtitled "Tales of Growing Up Groovy and Clueless"–takes place in New York City. It’s a defining book of my life as a person and as a writer.