Vladimir
'Favourite Book of the Year' Vogue
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2,0 • 1 Bewertung
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- 8,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A Sunday Times Paperback of the Year
'An astonishing debut . . . I was utterly hooked . . . by this twisty, sexy, shocking treat of a novel ' – The Sunday Times
A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her husband from his former students – a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own . . .
When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.
And so we meet our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose husband, a charismatic professor at the same small liberal arts college, is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both.
And when our unnamed narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder-box world comes dangerously close to exploding.
Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the restrictions of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Darkly funny and moving, Vladimir maps the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the messy contradictions of power and desire.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Playwright Jonas debuts with a mordantly funny post-#MeToo campus story about a 50-something woman unhinged by desire for a younger man. The unnamed narrator, a tenured English professor at a small upstate New York liberal arts college, starts the fall semester embroiled in scandal. The scandal is not hers (at least not at first)—her husband, John, also a professor in the department, has been placed on leave pending the results of a hearing after being accused of sexual predation by a host of young women, many of them former students. Denounced by both her colleagues and her adult daughter for her complicity in John's behavior, the narrator retreats into obsessive sexual fantasies about a new young colleague, Vladimir. She also yearns to recapture the physical allure of her youth and revive her own stagnant writing, and by the end, her behavior turns monstrous. Vain, narcissistic, and seemingly oblivious to the absurdity of her actions, the narrator can nevertheless pluck at readers' sympathies, especially in the generous and thoughtful ways she helps her daughter during her own personal crisis. The author generously studs the narrative with clever literary allusions (the narrator describes her mind in contrast to Edna St. Vincent Millay's: "more like a chaotic battle scene than the unfurling of insight"), and surprisingly upends assumptions about gender, power, and shame. Jonas is off to a strong start.
Kundenrezensionen
Fast but forgettable, odd and pointless plot
Fast-paced, largely engaging prose, though often plain, occasionally awkward, with much telling rather than showing. Plot-wise, I'm unsure what this novel tries to be and do, and what the author's intention behind it all was, if there was one. The story had potential but tries to be too many things while failing at even being one. The ending is unsatisfying and sudden, and the events leading up to it, especially the narrator's actions, are implausible, random and disturbing. I couldn't really tell you what this was about, and I would rather stop thinking about it. I felt okay reading the novel, engaged even, but now that I'm finished I find myself hating the book more the longer I think about it. Thus I will stop now before this turns into one star.