Saturday’s book club meeting went very well. We always seem to have thorough, interesting discussions when the book is bad. Ok, maybe bad is a bit strong – uninteresting. That sounds better.
This novel is set in a fictitious secondary ivy league school(nobody’s first choice). It’s small, extremely expensive and the main character is a professor of creative writing (with tenure). Actually, we weren’t sure how this character could have tenure only teaching one course and not really respecting his office hours. It’s basically a story about academic life, relationships between professors and students, and how some men could react in a midlife crisis.
The good thing about this book is the writing style of Francine Prose. It flows and she writes well as a man who thinks a little too much of himself; who at times seems to behave like a headless chicken. That’s contrary to the highly intelligent person he thinks he is. The worse thing was that the story was totally predictable once you’d begun the first 60 pages. That was a first for me. All in all, I say read it at your own risk of wasting your time. My book club is reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. We’ll be meeting on March 27 to discuss it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will be a better read than Blue Angel, especially since I hate circuses.