My Last Innocent Year
A Novel
-
-
4.3 • 76 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman’s final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos—and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor.
It’s 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her place—until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling.
Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel’s writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented: the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. As the lives of the adults around her slowly come apart, Isabel discovers that the line between youth and adulthood is less defined than she thought.
A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, Daisy Alpert Florin's My Last Innocent Year is a timely and wise portrait of a young woman learning to trust her voice and move toward independence while recognizing the beauty and grit of where she came from.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A young woman wrestles with love, family, desire, consent, and an uncertain future in this compelling, emotional novel. In the late ’90s, Isabel Rosen starts her last year as a student at a prestigious New Hampshire university with an ugly sexual encounter. She’s still sorting out her feelings when she begins an advanced writing class with R. H. Connelly, a respected poet who is older, handsome, confident, and well aware that Isabel is attracted to him. Debut author Daisy Alpert Florin brilliantly captures the details of life as a college student who’s on the cusp of adult responsibilities, with the Monica Lewinsky scandal appearing in the background of the emotionally resonant story. Gorgeously blending the bittersweet glow of nostalgia with the anxious uncertainties that come with so many relationships, My Last Innocent Year is a fast and satisfying read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Florin debuts with an immersive if overly polished campus novel involving a creative writing student's affair with her professor. Isabel Rosen, a New Yorker, enrolls at Wilder College in New Hampshire at the behest of her working-class father in the late 1990s. Shortly before she leaves for college, her mother dies from cancer. Grief-stricken during her freshman year, she's preoccupied by memories of her mother. By Isabel's senior year, her writing talent is recognized by R.H. Connelly, a married and formerly successful poet who is subbing for famous author Joanna Maxwell, who normally runs the senior workshop but is on leave due to an impending divorce from her professor husband, Tom, which caused a bit of a scandal. Against this backdrop, which also includes the Clinton-Lewinsky episode, Isabel and Connelly have an affair. Connelly helps Isabel grow creatively, though she has qualms about their relationship and suspects Connelly has done this before. Florian does great work exploring the era's murky sexual politics, but the prose is burnished to the point of feeling stilted, and a post-college section feels a bit rushed. While sterile, this throwback has its moments.
Customer Reviews
4 stars 🌟
I enjoyed reading this book. I gave it 4 stars bc to me the writing sometimes was all over the place and not in a terrible way but I’d have to reread because it just switched so quickly to a new subject.