Literary fiction. I really like Brand’s writing but, for whatever reason, it has been quite a few years since I last read any, so I was very happy to sink my teeth into this one. The narrator describes three love affairs that take place as she attempts to finish her doctoral dissertation. As someone who has spent a great deal of time around academics and who, though not an academic myself, lives rather too much in my head, it struck several chords. I think I was most taken by its successful all-at-once holding of so many of the contradictions – the hypocrisies as well as the tragically earnest tensions – characteristic of many who relate critically to the world and engage it to a large extent through the life of the mind. It’s that mix of penetrating insight and wilful obliviousness, intellectualizing that is simultaneously a tool to understand life and a mechanism to avoid it, the self-deprecating honesty and hilarious capacity for unaware (or acknowledged and then repressed) self-deception, the compulsion to find the thing to write, to say, that will solve it all even when you know very well that such a thing does not exist, the lure and harshness of the academy, the particular modes of foolishness that head-bound people are prone to in life and love. And that might sound heavy, but it really isn’t. Smart, readable, and fun.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.