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Starting the year off strong with a book that somehow manages to be incredibly boring and totally unhinged at the same time. I don’t have very coherent thoughts about it atm, but general impressions:
- Went a long way towards curing me of my yearning for a life in academia
- I felt like I was waiting for the “gotcha” the whole time
- If the goal was to write a deeply unlikable female character, brava I guess?
**spoilers**
So basically this middle aged English professor lady is married to another middle aged English professor guy who has been suspended from being a professor at the liberal arts college where they both work because he’s been sleeping with students (and his wife is like it’s ok, it was consensual and anyway we have an “arrangement” but the students are like it was an abuse of power). She meets this other professor (Vladimir) who’s in his 40s and she becomes obsessed with him, and they set a lunch date for like, 3 months away to talk about a book he wrote. Then basically the whole second act is her obsessing over her attractiveness in anticipation of this lunch date, and also complaining endlessly about aging and how snowflakey her students are. By the time the lunch date finally rolls around I’m kind of hypnotized by her neurotic, egotistical voice, and I’m sick of her like I get sick of my own internal monologue, and I’m so bored but I’m like 3/4 of the way through so I might as well keep reading. She takes Vladimir to lunch at this out of the way spot and gives the most cringeworthy speech I’ve ever ever read about how great his book is. Then she takes him to this little cabin she owns where she goes to write sometimes. Again this is all so boring and monotonous. So they get to this cabin and then she roofies Vladimir and chains him to a chair??? And then she puts on a fancy nightgown and goes to bed and I’m like girl what? And then she randomly almost dies in a fire. I was half asleep listening to the audiobook for this part and I genuinely thought I was hallucinating but that’s really what happened.
- Went a long way towards curing me of my yearning for a life in academia
- I felt like I was waiting for the “gotcha” the whole time
- If the goal was to write a deeply unlikable female character, brava I guess?
**spoilers**
So basically this middle aged English professor lady is married to another middle aged English professor guy who has been suspended from being a professor at the liberal arts college where they both work because he’s been sleeping with students (and his wife is like it’s ok, it was consensual and anyway we have an “arrangement” but the students are like it was an abuse of power). She meets this other professor (Vladimir) who’s in his 40s and she becomes obsessed with him, and they set a lunch date for like, 3 months away to talk about a book he wrote. Then basically the whole second act is her obsessing over her attractiveness in anticipation of this lunch date, and also complaining endlessly about aging and how snowflakey her students are. By the time the lunch date finally rolls around I’m kind of hypnotized by her neurotic, egotistical voice, and I’m sick of her like I get sick of my own internal monologue, and I’m so bored but I’m like 3/4 of the way through so I might as well keep reading. She takes Vladimir to lunch at this out of the way spot and gives the most cringeworthy speech I’ve ever ever read about how great his book is. Then she takes him to this little cabin she owns where she goes to write sometimes. Again this is all so boring and monotonous. So they get to this cabin and then she roofies Vladimir and chains him to a chair??? And then she puts on a fancy nightgown and goes to bed and I’m like girl what? And then she randomly almost dies in a fire. I was half asleep listening to the audiobook for this part and I genuinely thought I was hallucinating but that’s really what happened.