Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Vladimir

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Vladimir by Julia May Jonas

75 reviews

auudrey's review against another edition

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dark reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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jkneebone's review against another edition

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Vladimir takes place at a time of personal upheaval for the unnamed narrator. She, like her husband, is a tenured English professor at a small college in upstate New York. They have long enjoyed an "unconventional" marriage - e.g. affairs are allowed - but their life together is put under a microscope when a petition circulates calling for her husband's removal. Prior to relationships between teachers and students being explicitly banned by the school, her husband John had several consensual relationships with of-age students who now, as adults, feel they were taken advantage of. Our narrator feels that these women are overreacting - didn't everyone want to sleep with their professors in college? Why are they complaining about a power differential when John's power was what attracted them to him? - but nonetheless, her life is impacted by the accusations. Outsiders, unaware that she knew about the affairs, see her as the victimized wife. Students - and her own daughter - encourage her to leave her husband. Her colleagues question whether she should continue teaching while John's dismissal hearing is happening.

At the same time, a new professor has joined the English department: Vladimir. The narrator quickly becomes obsessed with Vladimir - she reads his book and admires his writing, she lusts after him, she has conflicting emotions about his troubled wife Cynthia (the narrator likes her, and wishes she didn't), she schemes to find time to be alone with him, and finally she takes action - and not necessarily in a good way.

With plenty of discussion of academia, power dynamics, gender roles and gendered relationships, changing standards and generational differences in views on representation, taboo subjects, etc., Vladimir is ripe with plenty to discuss. There are also literature references aplenty, and our narrator's own literary aspirations as her obsession with Vladimir inspires her to write for the first time in decades serves as a background plot.

Julia May Jonas intentionally demonstrates the narrator's hypocrisy through the contradictions of her life: she is a feminist and knows she should care less about her appearance, but is obsessed with her own aging and the way it has made her less beautiful, especially in comparison to still-youthful colleagues and students. She prides herself on her "unconventional" marriage, but still falls into her expected societal role as a wife - she cooks, cleans, raised their daughter, and worries that her husband (never published) is jealous of the two books she has written.

Although I recognized what Jonas was trying to do with these contradictions, for me this is where the novel fell short. Perhaps I'm just too young to relate to the internal dialogue and struggle of the narrator, but I spent too much of the book wondering why she hadn't already left her husband, or made him do his share of the housework, if she found him so annoying and was so checked out of their relationship. I didn't particularly enjoy reading over and over about how the narrator found herself unattractive and disgusting. Although I recognize that I'm part of the generation Jonas/the narrator is poking at in the book, and therefore endeavored to keep an open mind, I still struggled some with how the narrator downplayed her husband's actions.

The story was very fast-paced, and I finished the audiobook in a matter of days because it was so engaging. There is plenty to talk about, especially for English-y, academic-y people. The narrator's obsession with Vladimir could have been pushed further given that it is the central conceit of the book - there were entire sections where we didn't see Vladimir at all. Personally the ending wasn't too my taste, but I understood how it fit into what I think the author was trying to do.

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maddyontheoffbeat's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I really like how she portrayed the main character, with all of her insecurities about aging, but the off-branches about “the new generation” felt a little pedantic and overdone. I guess I was also expecting either a Lolita thing or a My Dark Vanessa vibe, which it was not. It kinda just skirted the edges of if. I also felt that the ending kind of came out of nowhere.

it felt to me that the fire was just an excuse to end it sooner, and that it didn’t really wrap up the story.

It just feels like there’s a lot unsaid.

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amanda02143's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Incredible writing. As an academic, so much of the setting and drama felt eerily accurate. Small town life, department and college politics, energetic new faculty vs the old guard, the changing norms and culture and the accompanying complications. The narrator, too, is very relatable in all her neuroses and flaws. Accomplished, beloved by students, and yet insecure about aging and her appearance while simultaneously hating herself for caring about superficial standards. All of which is to say this book had me fully engrossed....up to a point. SPOILER

The sharp plot turn beginning with the lunch date with Vladimir and her "plan" defied credibility. The lack of planning, for someone whose core identity is a researcher, is completely out of character. I was cringing, though willing to see where things were headed, until the zip ties and padlock.

From that point, the last third of the book seemed almost like an entirely different book. The plot is rushed to a resolution and all of the complexity that was pain-stakingly developed is thrown out with the fire.

Sid and her partner, Vlad and his wife all work things out and everyone just carries on?? Most implausible of all, even dinosaur professors save to the cloud these days. Too neat and tidy.

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edgaranjapoe's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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mraddd's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

lhanley17's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

The book is centered on a vain, unlikeable woman. The only action that takes place at the end is not believable and not developed like the characters.

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rachaeldamms's review against another edition

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funny reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

just_one_more_paige's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is one of those books that caught enough low-key buzz upon publication to get me interested. I can’t say that it would have been enough to get me to pick it up without the ALC from Libro.fm on hand as well, so shoutout to them for that. And shoutout to me too, for fitting in this one last read of 2022. Haha.

Vladimir is narrated in whole by an unnamed MC, a middle-aged (ish) English professor at a small liberal arts college in New England somewhere. When numerous accusations of a sexual nature are brought against her husband by former students, she is faced with her own dilemmas: how (and if) she should stand by him, judgement and condemnation from her own daughter, and a conflation of her own guilt/accomplice with her husband’s from colleagues and students alike. This is all framed within her own inner turmoil over her body’s aging, expectations of women in the eye of the public, and a burgeoning sexual obsession with a new professor at the school, Vladimir, that is bright, burning, invasive, and potentially overtaking her ability to make rational decisions uncolored by that relationship.

Well, I want to begin by saying that I really don’t know how I felt about this book, and I took a lot of notes while readings, so this review may seem long and a little all over the place…maybe it’ll help me organize my feelings and I’ll have a better idea of where I stand at the end. Hopefully.

To start, let me just say that I was absolutely stunned, in the very good sense of that phrase, by the writing. Jones’ prose is academic in a way that is both compulsive and intellectual – a fine line to walk I think (I don’t often run into academic writing that feels this approachable). The narrator’s voice is incredibly sincere, in the “this sounds exactly like I’d imagine the inner thoughts of this person to be, in the intelligence, self-assuredness, worldliness *as well as* the contradictive, unsurity, self-denial and self-deception. I was fascinated by the detail in her fantasies (the more erotic and the completely mundane, both) and how they fed her budding obsession, helping her convince herself that so many steps she took were ok even when they were really, really not ok. And there was a rather interesting self-awareness of internalized sexism and fat phobic/unrealistic beauty standards, yet without any move that I can parse to attempt to address it past basic recognition of it. (To this point, there are visceral descriptions of everything, but especially her own body, where she is especially cruel about her age and herself.) Anyways, our narrator seems imminently proud/looking for applause for that simple acknowledgment alone. Not a positive trait, perhaps, but a recognizable one. Similarly relatable, and in a similarly depressing way, the juxtaposition of her elite education/position and the walking on eggshells and careful awareness and management of every word/action of being in the world as a female.

As far as the plot goes, my impression before starting was that the people accusing our MC’s husband were younger, and though there is for sure a power dynamics situation at play with a professor-student relationship, I was happy at least that all the women were college aged and therefore of legal age. Honestly, I had in my head that the titular Vladimir was a young student too, but, while almost 20 years younger than the MC, he was around 40, so a very mature age too. Overall, this was an unexpected plot point that really helped me “enjoy” this reading experience more and I was grateful for it. Anyways, for the majority of the novel, this obsession with Vladimir was one of internal lust, in the narrator’s mind only, and it was riveting to see how all-encompassing it become even “just” mentally. And then oooooof, when things take a turn into real life action and she makes a move, it felt super creepy, in a way that I don’t think it would have needed to be, if she’d gotten out of her head for a second. How she mentally justifies each step, or doesn’t because she doesn’t feel she needs to, is very disconcerting to read. But I will say, it was literarily interesting, in juxtaposition with what her husband is accused of/in a hearing for, as commentary on how the world perceives male versus female predators.

A few other themes were explored in depth as well, and were done in a way that combined nicely with the that that our MC is an English professor and, therefore, her narration includes many literary references and comparisons and analyses (though mostly short and quick and easy to follow or move past, if you want). A lot of these additional themes involved discussions who authors can/can’t (or should/shouldn’t) write from the perspective of, what is the role of taking advantage of your own or other people’s traumas to create great works of art, and an intriguing exploration of morality in art (does/should it exist within or outside the bounds of normal mortality). Jones mentions, through her MC’s voice, conversations with students about the use of racist/anti-feminist works, either to represent as a product of their time, to understand a period worldview, or as simply damaging/harmful. Where is the line and who decides? It was also nice to see her mention the ways different generations, especially Millennials and Gen Z, have forced new critiques and considerations on that front. And of course, she’d be remiss if she didn’t address individual agency versus unequal power, and how to balance them, in light of the accusations against her husband. Of note, nothing is necessarily preached or decided…just…questioned and explored conceptually.

And now we come to the crux of my issue with this novel…the ending. I just, I don’t know about it! There was a spectacular literal and figurative conflagration as a result of this kind of obsession. And I see how it’s used as a device within this context, and acts as a nod to a few great literary moments (from Bronte and du Maurier to name a couple), and I do appreciate (and it softens the blow of things) the self-recognition of the heavy-handedness of it all. But, really, but after the depth and complexity of each thought/fantasy prior, the abrupt change in tone and overall turn was…too jarring, too maladroit, and maybe too easy, for me.

Ugh, I think I’m just going to have to land middle-lane on this reading experience. The narrator was so deeply wrapped up in her own imagination/justifications/mind and I loved that. It took all the mundanity of life (and the ways we each try to deal with it) and threw it in shocking contrast to her fantasies (and later extreme actions) about Vladimir, in a way that was just mesmerizing. And yet after the final pages, I was left feeling like I was built up to expect something more than I got, as far as literary greatness. And I’m just having a tough time getting past that. If you had a different experience or take, I would love to hear it! And if you aren’t sure whether to try this one or not, the writing itself is worth giving it a try to see if you feel differently than me about how it wraps up.

"I still feel the thrill of excitement in a university library. I still feel the potentiality—the students working toward becoming something, the stretching, searching minds, the curiosities of what will become of oneself buzzing at the study tables and between the rows of books. I find being among all that to be far more energizing than an enclosed and solitary space. Here I feel as though I’m engaged in the knowledge project."

"People said this crop of youth was weak, but we knew differently. We knew they were so strong—so much stronger than us, and equipped with better weapons, more effective tactics. They brought us to our knees with their softness, their consistent demand for the consideration of their feelings—the way they could change all we thought would stay the same for the rest of our lives, be it stripping naked for male directors in undergraduate productions of The Bacchae, ignoring racist statements in supposedly great works of literature, or working for less when others were paid more. They had changed all that when we hadn’t been able to, and our only defense was to call them soft. "

"I understood not only the bonding that comes out of complaining but also the incredible sense of identity that comes with discovering why you think something is wrong. I wanted them to feel that fire, that was what college was for. They were enacting a right of all young people, unearthing what they felt were the systemic wrongs of the world."

"We had wanted to live unconventionally, in a new way, invented unto ourselves, and now I was playing the most timeworn part."

"We lit a couple of fires in unexpected places, but we weren’t willing to burn it all down."

Content Warnings

karenmariscalo's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It presents the female character in an uncommon position

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