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A review by squid_vicious
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
4.0
Well damn.
I picked up “Vladimir” not really knowing what to expect, even if I read a bunch of reviews before getting a copy (thank you for putting it on my radar, Candi!). The topic of sex and power in academia in a post #metoo world is rich with potential, but is also an absolute minefield. Julia May Jonas walked through that minefield with incredible skill and guts and I am quite stunned by the result. While this book is certainly self-aware, it doesn’t have the self-consciousness I have often found in debuts. If anything, the writing is so strong and self-assured that I would not have believed it was a first novel. Jonas is unafraid of being provocative and nuanced, in ways that I am certain ruffled a few feathers, but I personally enjoy it when I look up from a book slightly disheveled.
I’m not even sure how to summarize this book. It is about a writing professor in her mid-fifties; her husband, who is chair of the department she works for, has been accused of having inappropriate relations with some former students in the past. She knew of his affairs and as per their understanding, did not mind, especially as the girls were all over the age of consent at the time of the trysts - but it takes less than that to get fired in academia now a days. While this is happening, a brilliant young novelist and his wife start teaching in the department, and our narrator becomes obsessively infatuated with the younger (in his early forties) man.
This is a fantastic character study that dives so deep beneath the narrator’s skin. Unlikable as she may be, she is drawn superbly: incredibly intelligent, but insecure and often cold, not because she doesn’t feel, but because her feelings have had a way of punishing her in the past and now they stay wrapped up. There is a carefully layered commentary of current sexual politics, the theme of agency and accountability, female competitiveness and paranoia, and mental health woven through the inner monologue, and I loved it. The prose is elegant and strong, the pacing had me gobbling up the book in big chunks like a glutton, and I couldn’t wait to see how this would all unravel. The book lost a star because while the last quarter of the book was well executed, it took me strangely off-guard: this was not at all where I thought or expected this to go, and I had hoped for something a little darker.
This is a very, very impressive novel, and I look forward to whatever Ms. Jonas comes up with next!
I picked up “Vladimir” not really knowing what to expect, even if I read a bunch of reviews before getting a copy (thank you for putting it on my radar, Candi!). The topic of sex and power in academia in a post #metoo world is rich with potential, but is also an absolute minefield. Julia May Jonas walked through that minefield with incredible skill and guts and I am quite stunned by the result. While this book is certainly self-aware, it doesn’t have the self-consciousness I have often found in debuts. If anything, the writing is so strong and self-assured that I would not have believed it was a first novel. Jonas is unafraid of being provocative and nuanced, in ways that I am certain ruffled a few feathers, but I personally enjoy it when I look up from a book slightly disheveled.
I’m not even sure how to summarize this book. It is about a writing professor in her mid-fifties; her husband, who is chair of the department she works for, has been accused of having inappropriate relations with some former students in the past. She knew of his affairs and as per their understanding, did not mind, especially as the girls were all over the age of consent at the time of the trysts - but it takes less than that to get fired in academia now a days. While this is happening, a brilliant young novelist and his wife start teaching in the department, and our narrator becomes obsessively infatuated with the younger (in his early forties) man.
This is a fantastic character study that dives so deep beneath the narrator’s skin. Unlikable as she may be, she is drawn superbly: incredibly intelligent, but insecure and often cold, not because she doesn’t feel, but because her feelings have had a way of punishing her in the past and now they stay wrapped up. There is a carefully layered commentary of current sexual politics, the theme of agency and accountability, female competitiveness and paranoia, and mental health woven through the inner monologue, and I loved it. The prose is elegant and strong, the pacing had me gobbling up the book in big chunks like a glutton, and I couldn’t wait to see how this would all unravel. The book lost a star because while the last quarter of the book was well executed, it took me strangely off-guard: this was not at all where I thought or expected this to go, and I had hoped for something a little darker.
This is a very, very impressive novel, and I look forward to whatever Ms. Jonas comes up with next!