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A review by mangofandango
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I both liked and did not like this one. I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It is a character study about an unreliable narrator who is preoccupied with a mostly random-to-her man as a sort of veneer for, or place to focus her various preoccupations with aging, sex, her marriage, and her husband being held accountable by the college they both work at for sexual relationships with students.
The narrator is frustrating and hard to read sometimes. She is irritating in the same way the cultural scripts and obsessions she stews in are irritating, her lens so cloudy with shame and body hatred and fear of aging that everything comes out sort of...gross and weird like it is inside her own head. It both makes me feel sorry for her and makes me want to...redirect her in some way. For all the sexy presentation of this book in premise and sort of lothario-looking cover, this isn't really a sexy story. The narrator is preoccupied by sex, but her experience of it in real life is always, again, sort of told in an off-putting way and she experiences it in ways that are more disappointing and self-conscious than anything else. She's also like, deeply weird about a lot of things...it goes some places I did not expect, and I guess that's all I will say to avoid spoilers.
I appreciate that it's both a literary-feeling and a light-feeling read, it was fun and clever and the allusions to Lolita are interesting to consider. There's some great lines and good, thoughtful stuff in here and I mostly enjoyed reading it. I just don't know where I land on how to feel about it, when all is said and done.
PS: there should be a content note here for various flavors of suspect, loaded, problematic sexual dynamics and situations, as this is a story about sex and power, gender, consent, etc. and like, a lot goes on?
The narrator is frustrating and hard to read sometimes. She is irritating in the same way the cultural scripts and obsessions she stews in are irritating, her lens so cloudy with shame and body hatred and fear of aging that everything comes out sort of...gross and weird like it is inside her own head. It both makes me feel sorry for her and makes me want to...redirect her in some way. For all the sexy presentation of this book in premise and sort of lothario-looking cover, this isn't really a sexy story. The narrator is preoccupied by sex, but her experience of it in real life is always, again, sort of told in an off-putting way and she experiences it in ways that are more disappointing and self-conscious than anything else. She's also like, deeply weird about a lot of things...it goes some places I did not expect, and I guess that's all I will say to avoid spoilers.
I appreciate that it's both a literary-feeling and a light-feeling read, it was fun and clever and the allusions to Lolita are interesting to consider. There's some great lines and good, thoughtful stuff in here and I mostly enjoyed reading it. I just don't know where I land on how to feel about it, when all is said and done.
PS: there should be a content note here for various flavors of suspect, loaded, problematic sexual dynamics and situations, as this is a story about sex and power, gender, consent, etc. and like, a lot goes on?
Content Warnings
Graphic: Infidelity, Confinement, and Sexual content
Moderate: Fatphobia