Veena’s review of My Education by Susan Choi
Women’s Fiction published by Viking Adult 3 Jul 13
Reading a book that is full of the dark and twisted isn’t the book to read while on vacation. Having fun with friends and seeing new and exciting places could be what kept me from being fully pulled into this story and engaging with the characters.
The book is written in a bibliographic style about Regina Gottlieb and told in her own voice. Ginny is a twenty-one-year-old graduate student, who is full of angst. We take a journey through four important relationships in her life, but the one that truly shapes her is the one most unexpected.
Ginny meets Nicholas Brodeur, a professor at the university she currently attends. He is a deeply romanticized figure who convinces Ginny to become his teaching assistant, despite the rumors she’s heard about the man. Drawn into his sensual and sexual world, the story then makes an abrupt 180 when Ginny is introduced to Nicholas’ wife, Martha. This is where that unexpectedness swoops in. Ginny and Martha begin a torrid and graphic affair, which is described in slow and agonizing detail. Her education has begun with sleeping with the professor’s wife but not the professor himself, and as problems begin to crop up in the marriage, Ginny’s education continues, becoming more complex as time goes on.
Dan Dutra is a bold, brash figure. He is Ginny’s roommate, and he expects her to sleep with him as the part of her rent. Ginny obliges. However, in his own way he really does care for her. Next is Casper. He is an aspiring writer who shares Ginny’s misery period when her relationship with Martha falls apart, but they share no romantic relationship.
It’s Nicholas who comes to Ginny’s rescue and she finally sleeps with him. It is at this stage that she finds herself and can now move on with her life, leaving her college angst and defeated hopes behind her. Once again we are abruptly thrown for a loop, this time fast forwarding to Ginny later in her life. She is now a successful author, a mother of a son, and married to a successful editor. Those abrupt turnarounds are both helpful and a hindrance. The first time left me confused, but the second worked just as it was meant to. For me, I think perhaps dividing the book into parts might have helped to stage the story, because essentially there are three main chapters in Ginny’s life.
The characters who have played a significant role in Ginny’s life come back one by one, and she finally deals with her past and finds forgiveness in trying to give Dutra, who she has reconnected with and reestablished their friendship, and Martha happiness.
Relationships are messy, no matter who is involved. Martha is the older woman seeking freedom from her marriage, but she’s the one who has a problem embracing the relationship, not wanting to come out in the open in front of her colleagues. The author combines the angst of youth with a torrid love affair and a betrayal of all other relationships, be it mother, wife, friend.
While there is definitely some clever prose throughout, which I actually found myself reading out loud to my traveling friends, the story drags too much and I was never that invested in the characters, never totally pulled into the story.
Grade: C –
Summary:
Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He’s said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He’s condemned on the walls of the women’s restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty – or his charismatic, volatile wife.
Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He’s said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He’s condemned on the walls of the women’s restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty – or his charismatic, volatile wife.
No excerpt available.
