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A review by lauriestein
A Fortunate Age by Joanna Rakoff
3.0
This is a tough one to review. I really wish I had read The Group first, because this is far more than an homage, it's basically an incident-by-incident translation of The Group into late 1990s/early 2000s vernacular. Sometimes the prose structure is even the same. Of course this hit especially close to home because of Oberlin but it also made the characters curiously remote. I recognized some classic Oberlin "types" and it was fascinating to see how they were shaped by their Oberlin experiences but I didn't recognize myself or my friends in them really at all. There were certainly some constants between my experience and theirs but the Oberlin connection also seemed to render the divergence in their behavior and attitudes half a generation removed from myself all the more marked.
Some of the plot point-by-plot point updates from The Group were ingenious and natural but others fell a little flat to me, especially after reading the original. Lil's death was one such example. The underlying tragedy I suppose is that even 60 years later in a more fortunate age (hint hint) she couldn't be saved but it felt a little contrived. The parallelism established between the 90s Oberlin group and 30s Vassar group could instructive and enlightening but sometimes a crutch and even occasionally misleading.
Some of the plot point-by-plot point updates from The Group were ingenious and natural but others fell a little flat to me, especially after reading the original. Lil's death was one such example. The underlying tragedy I suppose is that even 60 years later in a more fortunate age (hint hint) she couldn't be saved but it felt a little contrived. The parallelism established between the 90s Oberlin group and 30s Vassar group could instructive and enlightening but sometimes a crutch and even occasionally misleading.