I admit it: I have a thing about academic novels. And by that, I mean novels that occur on campuses and are about characters that are entrenched in academia (think Donna Tartt's The Secret History or I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe). Combine this proclivity with my penchant for getting book recommendations from NPR and I'm in. That's how I got to this book.
This isn't Susan Choi's first book - it's the most recent release by her but the first that I've read - and it's kind of typical in some ways. At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to the young protagonist, a first year graduate student, who is taking literature classes at an East Coast University- I assumed it was the Northeast but that could totally have been my own experiences and biases coming into play. She's taking classes with Nicholas Brodeur, a celebrated academic, and Choi seems to set up a relationship between Brodeur and our main character, until a scene at a dinner party where Brodeur's wife, Martha, eclipses him by swooping in and hooking up with our main character!
This book details, in a painfully intimate fashion, the unfolding of this relationship between our main character (Regina) and Martha - Regina's almost teenage exuberance and expectations of it (she is only 21 or 22) and Martha's guilty ambivalence (married, thirties maybe and with a new child). This book is, thematically, most of all, about how different people navigate different relationships at different points in their lives. This is driven home most poignantly by the book ending with Regina, fifteen years later, trying to navigate a wide variety of things from her marriage, to her career and other obligations that have given her a new perspective on what occurred when Regina was a mere 21.
What was also particularly interesting is how Choi takes on the sexual interests and love of two women who identified as straight. In some ways, it's really interesting - she takes it seriously and tries to provide some literature about people who are bisexual (is it REALLY so that literature has been about straight or lesbian/gay couples but not about bisexual attractions? Maybe that's a loaded question for another time). Regina says, interestingly, that the sex of her lover wasn't an issue and was very nonchalant about it. I got the opposite feeling from Martha. So in that sense, I respect this - this is LOVE BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE, not two women or two men or a man and a woman. Their life stages - one married with the children and the other a 21 year old grad student - is what is problematic for them, not that they are in a same sex relationship.
That being said, I simply loved reading this novel. Choi writes beautifully, elegantly and breathtakingly about this and I want to read her previous novels simply because of the grace and beauty of her writing.
This isn't Susan Choi's first book - it's the most recent release by her but the first that I've read - and it's kind of typical in some ways. At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to the young protagonist, a first year graduate student, who is taking literature classes at an East Coast University- I assumed it was the Northeast but that could totally have been my own experiences and biases coming into play. She's taking classes with Nicholas Brodeur, a celebrated academic, and Choi seems to set up a relationship between Brodeur and our main character, until a scene at a dinner party where Brodeur's wife, Martha, eclipses him by swooping in and hooking up with our main character!
This book details, in a painfully intimate fashion, the unfolding of this relationship between our main character (Regina) and Martha - Regina's almost teenage exuberance and expectations of it (she is only 21 or 22) and Martha's guilty ambivalence (married, thirties maybe and with a new child). This book is, thematically, most of all, about how different people navigate different relationships at different points in their lives. This is driven home most poignantly by the book ending with Regina, fifteen years later, trying to navigate a wide variety of things from her marriage, to her career and other obligations that have given her a new perspective on what occurred when Regina was a mere 21.
What was also particularly interesting is how Choi takes on the sexual interests and love of two women who identified as straight. In some ways, it's really interesting - she takes it seriously and tries to provide some literature about people who are bisexual (is it REALLY so that literature has been about straight or lesbian/gay couples but not about bisexual attractions? Maybe that's a loaded question for another time). Regina says, interestingly, that the sex of her lover wasn't an issue and was very nonchalant about it. I got the opposite feeling from Martha. So in that sense, I respect this - this is LOVE BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE, not two women or two men or a man and a woman. Their life stages - one married with the children and the other a 21 year old grad student - is what is problematic for them, not that they are in a same sex relationship.
That being said, I simply loved reading this novel. Choi writes beautifully, elegantly and breathtakingly about this and I want to read her previous novels simply because of the grace and beauty of her writing.
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