Vladimir

November 22, 2021
Playwright Jonas debuts with a mordantly funny post-#MeToo campus story about a 50-something woman unhinged by desire for a younger man. The unnamed narrator, a tenured English professor at a small upstate New York liberal arts college, starts the fall semester embroiled in scandal. The scandal is not hers (at least not at first)—her husband, John, also a professor in the department, has been placed on leave pending the results of a hearing after being accused of sexual predation by a host of young women, many of them former students. Denounced by both her colleagues and her adult daughter for her complicity in John’s behavior, the narrator retreats into obsessive sexual fantasies about a new young colleague, Vladimir. She also yearns to recapture the physical allure of her youth and revive her own stagnant writing, and by the end, her behavior turns monstrous. Vain, narcissistic, and seemingly oblivious to the absurdity of her actions, the narrator can nevertheless pluck at readers’ sympathies, especially in the generous and thoughtful ways she helps her daughter during her own personal crisis. The author generously studs the narrative with clever literary allusions (the narrator describes her mind in contrast to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s: “more like a chaotic battle scene than the unfurling of insight”), and surprisingly upends assumptions about gender, power, and shame. Jonas is off to a strong start.

Starred review from December 1, 2021
In this deeply engrossing debut novel, readers follow an erudite and neurotic narrator, a tenured English professor at a small college in upstate New York, as she navigates the fallout of her husband's sexual indiscretions. He was the chair of her university department, and fell from grace when a group of young women banded together to reveal the inappropriate relationships he groomed them into while they were his pupils. The narrator doesn't fully accept that her career and personal life might pay some of the cost of her spouse's indiscretions. That's when Vladimir Vladinski arrives to teach in their department. He's a strapping Adonis of an intellectual, with a tragically beautiful and mentally struggling wife, a three year-old daughter, and a highly regarded book. The narrator is hungry for as much of Vlad as she can get her hands on, and the degree of messiness she will employ to satiate this craving knows no bounds. Jonas' novel is an enthralling, self-aware, and, at times, hilarious critique of academic privilege, while the narrator's journey is a thoughtful allegory for how the old guard is responding to a new world. This tale is a joy to read as it lambastes resistance to change, while still allowing for victories and compassion for the characters it roasts.

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Starred review from December 1, 2021
When her husband is accused of sexual misconduct on campus, an English professor is overcome by scandalous drives of her own. The unnamed narrator of Jonas' debut has this initial reaction to five female students coming forward to accuse her husband, John, who's the chair of the English department, of inappropriate conduct: "I am depressed that they feel so guilty about their encounters with my husband that they have decided he was taking advantage of them. I want to throw them all a Slut Walk and let them know that when they're sad, it's probably not because of the sex they had, and more because they spend too much time on the internet, wondering what people think of them." She and John have had an open marriage for decades, but the sense of exposure she feels after the accusations become public wounds her in unexpected ways. She finds herself sexually obsessed with a new hire named Vladimir Vladinski, a hunky young novelist who has arrived in town with a memoirist wife and daughter. At every point, the coolness of her intellect and the clarity of her self-awareness are at war with her vanity and shame about aging. For example, her reaction to the assiduous domestic and bodily preparations she makes to receive Vlad and family for a pool party: "Enraged at my vapidity, I forced myself to sit down and read several articles in the latest issue of the New York Review of Books before I fixed my nighttime drink." Several interesting subplots support the main one as it ticks along, picks up speed, and finally hurtles toward its explosive climax: the narrator's relationship with her grown daughter, a lesbian lawyer; the changing chemistry between her and her female students; the backstory on Vlad and his wife. A conversation at the pool party about why young writers are so drawn to memoir and autofiction, a pronouncement on the best timing for a forbidden cigarette, and advice about cooking tomato sauce are typical of the astuteness of this book on matters literary, psychological, and culinary. Like the man she shackles to a chair in the prologue, once this narrator has you, she won't let go. A remarkable debut.

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