Our unnamed narrator is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at a college in upstate New York. The only reason he has a job is because his wife, also an assistant professor, is a well-regarded novelist who made his employment part of her agreement to work there.
He has just spent three months on a fellowship in Bordeaux. But instead of working on his second novel, which is needed for tenure, he spent a lot of time drinking to excess and doing everything but writing. This, of course, puts him under a great deal of pressure once he returns to work.
He tries to keep stalling everyone who wants to read his work in progress, including his wife. He has nothing to show for it. So what better way to compensate than embarking on an affair with one of your oldest friends, who happens to be your wife’s best friend?
There really were no particularly likable characters in this book. I then learned that this is the author’s fictionalized account of his marriage and divorce from the author Hannah Pittard. (She wrote about this in her memoir but changed all the names; he then wrote a novel about it, and basically had his character behave the way he did.)
I found this really disappointing but I wanted to see if it redeemed itself. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t.) This was marketed as an academic novel that was both funny and moving. While the author is a talented writer, this book fell completely flat for me.
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