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A review by hayleybeale
The English Experience by Julie Schumacher
3.0
2.5 stars rounded up
Sadly, I liked the idea of this novel way more than I liked the novel itself.
A crusty old English professor takes a group of students to London to “Experience: England” and, despite none of them appearing to have a particularly good time, it turns out to be a life-changing experience for many of them.
The professor, Jay Fitger, is coerced into leading the trip and is pretty miserable the whole time he’s there. We get to know the students, too many of them for any to make much of a mark in my memory, through their applications and the 500-word papers they write every day about their experiences. By and large, the students are a dopey bunch and can’t string a coherent essay together which is maybe meant to be satirical or is maybe just a sad reflection of the sort of students that go to minor New England liberal arts colleges.
Jay himself does little to augment the students’ experiences but, by happy accident, many of them find their own way about and are able to seek out what interests them rather than the planned trips. As we discover from their essays, this is the first time abroad for many of them and what they want from the trip has little to do with the contents of the British museum. Such is the way of youth.
Jay’s unlikely relationship with Janet, his ex-wife, is of much more interest to him than either London or his students and their phone calls and emails provide the narrative spine for his trip abroad.
After some pretty disastrous outings, the party return to college and an epilogue from three years later reveals the inadvertent lessons they all learned. It’s honestly quite a nifty idea but I just thought the novel underdelivered - maybe because it’s the third novel about Fitger and I haven’t read either of the other two. You might find this funnier and more charming than I did if you're in the Fitger groove.
Thanks to Doubleday and Netgalley for the digital review copy.
Sadly, I liked the idea of this novel way more than I liked the novel itself.
A crusty old English professor takes a group of students to London to “Experience: England” and, despite none of them appearing to have a particularly good time, it turns out to be a life-changing experience for many of them.
The professor, Jay Fitger, is coerced into leading the trip and is pretty miserable the whole time he’s there. We get to know the students, too many of them for any to make much of a mark in my memory, through their applications and the 500-word papers they write every day about their experiences. By and large, the students are a dopey bunch and can’t string a coherent essay together which is maybe meant to be satirical or is maybe just a sad reflection of the sort of students that go to minor New England liberal arts colleges.
Jay himself does little to augment the students’ experiences but, by happy accident, many of them find their own way about and are able to seek out what interests them rather than the planned trips. As we discover from their essays, this is the first time abroad for many of them and what they want from the trip has little to do with the contents of the British museum. Such is the way of youth.
Jay’s unlikely relationship with Janet, his ex-wife, is of much more interest to him than either London or his students and their phone calls and emails provide the narrative spine for his trip abroad.
After some pretty disastrous outings, the party return to college and an epilogue from three years later reveals the inadvertent lessons they all learned. It’s honestly quite a nifty idea but I just thought the novel underdelivered - maybe because it’s the third novel about Fitger and I haven’t read either of the other two. You might find this funnier and more charming than I did if you're in the Fitger groove.
Thanks to Doubleday and Netgalley for the digital review copy.