Vladimir
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2.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by 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 husband 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 extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our 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.
With her bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured literary debut, Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the strictures of morality (so sensible, so sober!) bump up against the impulses of the human heart (so mercurial, so vain!) Propulsive, darkly funny, and surreptitiously moving, Vladimir maps the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the messy contradictions of power and desire.
PRAISE FOR VLADIMIR
'If Netflix's The Chair, Lisa Taddeo's best-seller Three Women, and the most compelling passages of Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands had a love child (just go with me here), it would be this fiction debut. With a title character who's a sought-after young novelist new to a college faculty, Vladimir leaves the reader with more questions than answers-about sex, and sexual politics - in the most delicious way.' Entertainment Weekly
'There's no chance that Julia May Jonas's darkly funny Vladimir will slip under the radar: featuring an English professor facing allegations of inappropriate conduct, it "maps the personal and political minefield of our current moment."' Daily Mail
'Like the man she shackles to a chair in the prologue, once this narrator has you, she won't let go. A remarkable debut.' Kirkus starred review
'Droll, dry, and pacy, Vladimir is deliciously unsparing and enormous fun.' Lionel Shriver, author of We Need To Talk About Kevin
'Vladimir is among the best novels of the past two decades. Astonishing, magnificent, dazzling, deeply moving - and also deeply funny - it reminded me of some of my favorite works of fiction, from The Age of Innocence to Revolutionary Road to Le Divorce. It is the rare novel that I hoped would never, ever end.' Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year
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.
