Review by Booklist Review
The marriage between a magnetic professor and her novelist husband is rocked by infidelity, as told by a grad student besotted with one of them in this delightful puzzle box of a novel. Roberta, who goes by Robbie, is hopelessly in love with Simone, the incandescent star of the creative writing department at Edwards University, who rose to fame after penning a searing memoir about losing her mother. Simone's husband, Ethan, a floundering novelist, is on staff but feels eclipsed by his more dynamic wife. Though their marriage is solid and their sex life flourishing, Ethan sleeps with the department administrative assistant, Abigail, while Simone grows close to Robbie, to the point that they're working, running, and even showering together. When Robbie sets in motion the revelation of Ethan's affair, she hopes it will drive Simone into her arms, but she discovers that in real life, controlling the narrative is much harder than it is on the page. A witty and wise exploration of the lengths people will go to in order to satiate their deepest desires.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
An MFA student reveals secrets about her writing professors' marriage in Adrian's clever if underwhelming latest (after The Second Season). The novel takes the form of a manuscript written by Robbie Green, a woman studying at Edwards University in Upstate New York, and it follows the story of tenured faculty member Simone, who's well-known on campus for her sex appeal and her marriage to fellow professor Ethan. While Ethan is in Portland, Ore., visiting his mother, he sleeps with Abigail, the creative writing department's secretary, who's in town visiting her father. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Ethan, Simone becomes intensely close with Robbie, as the two read Mrs. Dalloway and train for a marathon together. After Abigail emails Simone about her affair with Ethan, Simone holds the betrayal over Ethan's head and withholds the truth of her "emotional affair" with Robbie. When Robbie joins Ethan's workshop, she begins writing about their complicated foursome for her thesis. Adrian poses intriguing questions about the nature of betrayal, the blurry ethics of professor-student intimacy, and the right to tell another person's story, but too often the narrative favors Robbie's snarky barbs ("Abigail, who was not attractive but to whom Ethan was attracted") over meaningful insights. This is a mixed bag. Agent: Susan Ginsburg, Writers House. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A pretentious academic couple engenders the wrath of a jealous grad student at an elite college in upstate New York. This terrifically inventive matryoshka doll of a novel opens with a title page indicating we are reading the thesis project of Roberta Green, MFA candidate. Yet the narrative blending that follows is so layered that even by the end it begs an unraveling of which fiction is which. The outline is simple: Simone is an anomaly--a glamorous academic--and happily married to Ethan, a fellow English professor. Though Ethan worships his wife, he has a fling with the rumpled Abigail, the department's secretary. Meanwhile, Simone is having an emotional entanglement with grad student Roberta. As her advisor, Simone should be guiding Roberta on this MFA project we are reading, but instead they are training for a marathon and wandering around Simone and Ethan's house in states of sweaty undress. When Simone discovers Ethan's affair, the couple embarks on an impromptu cross-country journey. The work has two remarkably distinct registers: It's a tender portrait of an enviable marriage balanced by a delightfully smarmy tone with laugh-out-loud passages of humor. As Roberta dates a girl on campus while fantasizing about Simone and the revenge she will be taking in the form of this novel, Ethan and Simone are left wondering what their marriage means. But what is the truth? A novel that makes authorial control so visible--Roberta's comically biased character portraits; the midpage shifting between third- and first-person narration; the conclusion rewritten to first reflect Roberta's fantasy and then the "reality"--could have left the whole enterprise as simply a jewel to be admired. Happily, it is all much more than a Borgesian experiment: It is a finely observed work on love. A masterful exploration on the varieties of truth, and the stories we craft about ourselves. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
