Book: The Lessons
Jan. 9th, 2011 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livAuthor: Naomi Alderman
Details: (c) N Alderman Ltd 2010; Pub Penguin Viking 2010; ISBN 978-0-670-91629-0
Verdict: The lessons has the form of a trashy chick-lit novel, but is really well written.
Reasons for reading it: I enjoyed Disobedience, Alderman's first novel. And this seemed light enough to suit a long train journey when I didn't have huge amounts of brain.
How it came into my hands: The library. I have a colleague who complains that the library has too many trashy romances and not enough Srs Litratchur, but I think it does rather a good job of quickly buying up some of the most interesting contemporary stuff.
If I didn't already have a positive impression of Alderman, I probably wouldn't have picked up The Lessons based on the blurb and general packaging. It's about a student who goes to Oxford and falls in with a circle centred on an eccentric gay millionnaire, and there are all kinds of love polygons and shenanigans. The thing about it is, though, that it's realistic rather than glamourous. The characterization is really impressive, and most significantly, actions have real consequences, both practical and emotional.
Two aspects really stand out compared to the sort of book that might have been expected. One is the portrayal of Oxford itself; university life is only a small part of the novel, but it's absolutely, viscerally true to life. It's not romanticized, it's not just a backdrop for implausibly wild parties and sexual permutations, and it's not a paradise of unworldly scholarship. The protagonist, James, is an "ordinary" student, just about able to keep up with the demands of the course if he works intensely hard, but not a genius or a future academic, and The Lessons is almost uniquely clear-eyed about what the experience of studying at Oxford is like for somebody like that, both the positives and the negatives.
The second is the major romance arc. Mark could so easily be a gay cliché, being rich, spoiled, promiscuous and somewhat camp. But he's the main love interest, not a token character introduced to demonstrate diversity and get out of the way so that the plot can concentrate on the all-important heterosexual pair bonding. There's an impressive degree of realism about the love lives of students who live in a fairly permissive world and are willing to experiment sexually; some are definitely bi, others are straight or gay but not 100% exclusively so. It's not a homophobia-free utopia, but neither is being gay a Big Deal either for the characters or the reader. I also like the realism of students being young, idealistic or simply emotionally immature; their relationships are messy and awkward and sometimes sex is just a fun thing with few consequences and sometimes they fall passionately in love or just end up in relationships out of inertia, and there aren't any grand tragedies or implausibly perfect romances, just connections and betrayals that really matter to the people involved but aren't the stuff of grand drama.
Given it's the kind of book that is mainly about James coming of age and learning to approach relationships in a more mature way, he spends a lot of the book being somewhat annoying and bratty and hopeless. I did still care about him, though, and I like the fact that his happy ending is about learning to be independent rather than about finding The One. (That's particularly unusual for a male protagonist, let alone one who isn't purely heterosexual.) It's a more slight book than Disobedience, but the characterization is good enough to lift it well above the ordinary.
Details: (c) N Alderman Ltd 2010; Pub Penguin Viking 2010; ISBN 978-0-670-91629-0
Verdict: The lessons has the form of a trashy chick-lit novel, but is really well written.
Reasons for reading it: I enjoyed Disobedience, Alderman's first novel. And this seemed light enough to suit a long train journey when I didn't have huge amounts of brain.
How it came into my hands: The library. I have a colleague who complains that the library has too many trashy romances and not enough Srs Litratchur, but I think it does rather a good job of quickly buying up some of the most interesting contemporary stuff.
If I didn't already have a positive impression of Alderman, I probably wouldn't have picked up The Lessons based on the blurb and general packaging. It's about a student who goes to Oxford and falls in with a circle centred on an eccentric gay millionnaire, and there are all kinds of love polygons and shenanigans. The thing about it is, though, that it's realistic rather than glamourous. The characterization is really impressive, and most significantly, actions have real consequences, both practical and emotional.
Two aspects really stand out compared to the sort of book that might have been expected. One is the portrayal of Oxford itself; university life is only a small part of the novel, but it's absolutely, viscerally true to life. It's not romanticized, it's not just a backdrop for implausibly wild parties and sexual permutations, and it's not a paradise of unworldly scholarship. The protagonist, James, is an "ordinary" student, just about able to keep up with the demands of the course if he works intensely hard, but not a genius or a future academic, and The Lessons is almost uniquely clear-eyed about what the experience of studying at Oxford is like for somebody like that, both the positives and the negatives.
The second is the major romance arc. Mark could so easily be a gay cliché, being rich, spoiled, promiscuous and somewhat camp. But he's the main love interest, not a token character introduced to demonstrate diversity and get out of the way so that the plot can concentrate on the all-important heterosexual pair bonding. There's an impressive degree of realism about the love lives of students who live in a fairly permissive world and are willing to experiment sexually; some are definitely bi, others are straight or gay but not 100% exclusively so. It's not a homophobia-free utopia, but neither is being gay a Big Deal either for the characters or the reader. I also like the realism of students being young, idealistic or simply emotionally immature; their relationships are messy and awkward and sometimes sex is just a fun thing with few consequences and sometimes they fall passionately in love or just end up in relationships out of inertia, and there aren't any grand tragedies or implausibly perfect romances, just connections and betrayals that really matter to the people involved but aren't the stuff of grand drama.
Given it's the kind of book that is mainly about James coming of age and learning to approach relationships in a more mature way, he spends a lot of the book being somewhat annoying and bratty and hopeless. I did still care about him, though, and I like the fact that his happy ending is about learning to be independent rather than about finding The One. (That's particularly unusual for a male protagonist, let alone one who isn't purely heterosexual.) It's a more slight book than Disobedience, but the characterization is good enough to lift it well above the ordinary.
