Admission tells the story of the failing marriage of an admission officer at Princeton set against a season of admission work, sifting through applications to find the lucky special high school seniors that will be deemed worthy to attend the university. The heroine appears to have a need, especially at dinner parties, to channel the [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘college’
December 15, 2008
Racing Odysseus by Roger Martin
Racing Odysseus is the story of a college president on sabbatical who, having narrowly escaped death by cancer, decides to enroll at a small liberal arts college and be a freshman for a quarter. He brings with him his obvious age, his identity as a college president (see below), and some special privileges such as living [...]
December 3, 2008
Indignation by Philip Roth
Indignation starts well: the son of a kosher butcher concludes a successful high school career by entering college, the first in his family. There he studies endlessly to achieve a perfect record while working on weekends so he can afford the tuition. Meanwhile his middle class cohorts stay up late, chase girls, and drink too much, [...]
February 22, 2008
Matrimony by Joshua Henkin
Research is a good thing. It tells you to write Mountain View, not Mountainview. It shows you that, walking on College Avenue from the Berkeley campus, your hero cannot buy and eat an ice cream cone — there are no ice cream shops until Rockridge, a mile away. Your hero is unlikely to hail a cab [...]
