Monday, August 25, 2014

2014 book 204

Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members
Schumacher's latest (her second adult novel after a few YA books, including The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls) will feel insanely familiar to anyone who has ever worked in academia. It's the story of a creative writing and literature professor--the sort of washed-up guy who has written a bunch of autobiographical novels about his affairs, and now teaches at a middling Midwestern college, but somehow Schumacher makes him likable (ok, I mean, definitely at more than one point I was like, "WHAT A DICK!" but he kind of owns being a dick?). The hook is that the entire novel is told in letters from this guy--especially letters of recommendation, with the occasional department-related memo and personal letter thrown in. It's somehow equally hilarious and depressing, and it really works. A/A-.

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