Kaavya Viswanathan’s debut novel was withdrawn by publisher Little Brown because several passages unconsciously borrowed from other authors’ works. Viswanathan has reworked those sections; the revised version appears below.
Call me Opal. Some months ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and with senior year in high school having nothing particular to interest me, my parents and I thought I would set my sights on Harvard. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take the SATs.
Ah, senior year. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, I had everything before me, I had nothing before me. I lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with my dad, Henry, who was a farmer, and mom, Em, who was the farmer's wife. Our house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Henry and Em had a big bed in one corner, and I a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where we could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.
It was late November. “Opal!” No answer. “Opal!” No answer. “What’s gone with that girl, I wonder? You OPAL!” No answer.
Em pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a girl; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for “style,” not service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear: “Well, I lay if I get hold of you I’ll -- ”
But I was far away with my friends. “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” I grumbled, lying on the grass.
“It’s so dreadful to be poor!” sighed my best friend Meg, looking down at her old dress.
“I don't think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,” added little Amy, Meg’s cousin, with an injured sniff.
I was beginning to get very tired of sitting by my friends on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice I had peeped into the book Meg was holding, but it had no pictures or conversations in it. “And what is the use of a book,” I thought, “without pictures or conversation?”
So I was considering in my own mind (as well as I could, for the hot day made me feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by me…