A review by scorpstar77
Zuleika Dobson or an Oxford Love Story by Max Beerbohm

3.0

Hoo-boy. This is a really short book (only 147 pages), but DAMN, I felt every single page. I can read 19th century lit with the best of them, but this one took me forever to get through. Okay, synopsis: a quirky, funny rich girl comes to visit her grandfather at Oxford, and the entire university falls in love with her. And decides to commit suicide for her. The end. It's a pretty heavy-handed satire about Victorian-era romanticism and chivalry and aristocracy and honor, and it is really funny in spots. But between the funny bits, it's just so hard to keep reading. I didn't even get into the story until about 75 pages in, when the heavy satire started. I read the first 50 pages or so about 6 months ago, put it down and didn't pick it back up again until this week. I was determined to finish it, and finish I did. I would have rated it higher if it hadn't been so damned hard to finish.