Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Vladimir

Immensely captivating with a disappointing & rushed ending. Gives ‘I Love Dick’ by Chris Kraus energy 3❤️‍🔥

NB Personally disagreed with 90% of the protagonists’ thoughts & actions + her critiques of feminism, consent & cancel culture in a post me too era - but worth reading.

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amandadelbrocco's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective tense slow-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

5.0

Updated 2024: I have thought about this book at least once a week since I first read it almost two years ago. It's definitely not for everyone though.

Original review 2022: I absolutely adored this book. I found the main character’s inner monologue enthralling and relevant. Originally when I finished, I had rated it 4 stars but upon reviewing I have increased that to 5. This hasn’t left my head in several days.

The ending felt a little rushed but I still found it fitting.

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beneduck's review against another edition

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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

1.25

there's no super clear spoilers in here, but definitely strong allusions. proceed with caution.
major TW for eating disorders, substance abuse, suicide, sexual assault
----

After immediately finishing here are my thoughts. The protag has horribly inconsistent psychology. Her actions and reactions make no sense compared to how she is in other parts of the story. This carries over to how Vladimir acts (thinking or a specific chair incident!) and it just pissed me off! The ending was too clean and resolved. So unbelievable.
Also!! the protag will not shut the fuck up about her body and eating habits, which i found really upsetting at times. she's obsessed with appearing younger, skinnier, "healthier". for tons of other reasons, i hate her and i don't enjoy hating her, which takes most of the fun out of this book.
i found the dustjacket summary soooo misleading -- as well as the super sexed-up cover. this is NOT
" Propulsive, darkly funny, and surreptitiously moving," it's horrific, glorifying, and disheartening. the protag makes light of her students' worries about potential sexual assault and deals with the whole husband thing in a spineless manner and never seems to form her own concrete opinions -- really about anything. even her "obsession" with vladimir in the first half consists of daydreaming about sex with him -- hardly an obsession, more aptly named a crush. i was excited for a dark and sexy book, and i got one that was uncomfortable in a way that wasn't productive.

re: the chair scene: "I let her lead me to the scene, not sure if this event would actually happen. I love characters who do something questionable on an impulse and then must deal with the consequences." it sure as hell was impulsive -- but it felt like she was acting on some other character's impulse and not her own. our darling protag has yet to feel capable of something like she does, and when she does it, it feels horrific instead of exciting.

re: the author's treatment of sexual misconduct: "I still feel connected to a sense of sexuality as a form of freedom and as something that can be used against you. Protectiveness about sexuality, making sexuality feel traumatic or disturbing, can be used as a way to wield power over female sexuality. And that was something that was much more prevalent about the sexual politics of when I was in college and growing into adulthood. It was really about taking down all of those taboos." i! do! not! like! these! implications! it's not fair for me to disagree with an author's stance as a reason for not liking a book, but the treatment of sexual boundaries in this book is sickening. simply put, what was attempted as a reclamation of aged female sexuality is actually just attempted assault. to be the reader seeing this through a first person narrator was so unpleasant, and, yet again, not in a productive manner.

booooo!! this went from a fun hate read to a capital-H hate read. this prof works (or used to work? unsure) at my college. i hope i see her so i can try to make amends.

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jesshindes's review

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dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I'm fairly ambivalent on campus novels - I think I over-indulged on them when I was in my late teens and about to go to uni, plus I have read enough 'English prof has an affair with a student' books to last a lifetime - but I saw Vladimir on offer in an indie bookshop, and someone I follow on Twitter had recommended it enthusiastically, so I ordered it anyway.

I ended up enjoying it. Yes, the story *does* feature a male English prof who is going through a disciplinary after five past students have reevaluated their relationships with him in the light of #metoo; but Jonas's novel benefits from taking the perspective, not of the philandering academic, but of his wife. Our unnamed protagonist is 58 and re-evaluating her relationship in light of recent developments; although this is complicated by the fact that they've had an open marriage and she both knew about and sanctioned her husband's involvements. Another complication arrives in the form of Vladimir, a new recruit to the English department, up-and-coming novelist, and hunk. It doesn't take long for our narrator to develop an all-consuming crush.

What I liked best about 'Vladimir' was its ability to surprise me. I didn't know what was going to happen - with the marriage, with Vladimir, with the protagonist's job - and on several occasions the novel turned in a direction I didn't expect. This was particularly true in the final section, which took a turn towards the thriller and which I could have done with even more of. More generally, I felt like the characters and their relationships consistently got beyond the stereotypes into which they could easily have settled, which obviously amped up my enjoyment; and finally, I really appreciated the humour. The novel doesn't take itself completely seriously (I'd probably call it black comedy?) and I liked that Jonas wasn't afraid to be either silly or bizarre.

The reservations that I had were mostly around the novel's beliefs, or thesis, or whatever you'd call that. I don't expect everything I read to be a polemic (not much fun) but I read the novel as being broadly ~about the relationship between gender and power, and how that plays out in all sorts of ways in this environment of a fairly fancy liberal arts college in the north-east of the USA. Because the narrator is an older woman, she lacks certain kinds of power (and she's obsessed by aging, its effects on her body and her desirability); her relationship to her husband has complicated implications for her own standing within the university; and the students, represented as politically engaged but somewhat naive, clamouring for social justice without maybe a full understanding of its nuances (or at least, their understanding conflicts with the narrator's) both wield and lack power in their own ways. I did appreciate that the narrator (and by implication, Jonas) made efforts not to dismiss the students' concerns around emotional safety (safe spaces, trigger warnings) even while the novel challenges some of these ideas' underpinning assumptions. I enjoyed the way that the see-saw of power tilted back and forth during the final sequence particularly; and there's some neat work whereby Jonas shows up some of the narrator's own biases, minimisations, and misconceptions around sexism, sexual assault and her own experiences in the academy. Still, I don't know that I could say with conviction what the novel's ultimate opinion on most of the issues it deals with might be, except for, 'hooboy, this is complicated'. That's legitimate, but it's not especially punchy.

Overall, there were enough things I liked about the novel that I would recommend it - especially for the narrator, who was complex and funny - but I feel like there was another darker, weirder book somewhere inside of this. It emerges in flashes towards the end of the novel, particularly; but I'd love to have seen what it looked like fully-realised.

Content Warnings

itsme_lori's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense 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? Yes

1.5

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