My Education

March 18, 2013
The throes of an obsessive relationship allow a young graduate student to avoid growing up for a little while in Choi’s dark and stormy fourth novel (following A Person of Interest). Regina Gottlieb, anxious about being a new student in a prestigious graduate English program, finds a welcome distraction in Nicholas Brodeur, her seminar professor. His offer of a TA position calms her fears of inadequacy, and even Regina’s roommate, Daniel Dutra, a med student and born eccentric, approve of the connection. Despite Nicholas’s good looks and the rumors about his raffish ways on campus, Regina is able to keep a personal distance from him. It’s different, however, when she meets his wife, Martha, during a party at the Brodeurs’ house. The two women soon embark on a torrid, all-consuming affair, with Regina measuring her days in a toxic swirl of hours in Martha’s bed and at a local bar. Even as Regina loses her way, though, the narrative never lacks direction. Choi keeps the moments between her characters believable while building momentum toward the illicit lovers’ inevitable falling-out. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit.

June 1, 2013
The sexual initiation of a graduate student, who learns how much she does not know, in a novel that somehow feels both overstuffed (style) and undernourished (substance). From the reference in the first sentence to "a highly conspicuous man," one of "scandalous, noteworthiness, and exceptional, even sinister, attractiveness," Choi (A Person of Interest, 2008, etc.) makes it obvious to the reader that the novel's rites of passage won't be confining this education to the classroom. Yet what seems inevitable, particularly after the narrator becomes the teaching assistant to the man of such scandalous, sinister attractiveness, turns out to be anything but, as her attraction to her mentor is mere prelude to complications involving the professor's wife, the professor's nannies, the narrator's roommate, and one alcohol-drenched party and another even more drunken happy hour. Throughout, Regina Gottlieb seems as clueless and directionless as she is articulate (or at least verbose; she expresses herself in convoluted sentences and paragraphs that test the reader's endurance). She thinks and writes (for, ultimately, she becomes a writer) like this: "Even I, who had never before had a female lover; much less one who was married; much less married to my own former mentor; much less a professor herself at the school at which I was a student--even I who, due to all this complicated inexperience...," and so on. Her orgasms require expressions almost as choppy: "I seemed to come right away, with a hard, popping effervescence, as if her mouth had raised blisters, or an uppermost froth; but beneath, magma still heaved and groaned and was yearning to fling itself into the air." Flash forward 15 years, when she informs, succinctly, "Reader, I grew up," and her education has now extended to her own marriage ("an intricate code of reliance") and middle age (when "the least reconcilable times of one's life would in fact coexist until death" and "I didn't live thoughtlessly in my flesh anymore"). Yet her past improbably returns as more than flashbacks, and her education leaves her by the end knowing even less than when she had started. There seems to be a happy ending here, though it's hard to be certain for whom.

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July 1, 2013
In September 1992, 21-year-old Regina Gottlieb begins graduate school at an elite East Coast university. She is immediately intrigued by charismatic literature professor Nicholas Brodeur, whose seductive reputation precedes him. Though she is fascinated by Nicholas, it is Nicholas' remote, mercurial wife, Martha, who inspires an overwhelming passion in Regina. After sharing a charged kiss at a dinner party, Regina pursues Martha with a dogged relentlessness and throws herself into the affair with all the exuberance of youth. Although Martha tries to conceal the relationship from Nicholas and the nanny who helps care for their son, Joachim, Regina is reckless and angry that Martha won't plan a future with her. PEN/W. G. Sebald Award winner Choi (A Person of Interest, 2008) eventually moves the story ahead by 15 years, allowing Regina to view the consequences of her actions from a decidedly more mature perspective. With a sharp eye and piercing insights, Choi captures the heady romanticism that infuses a youthful love affair before the responsibilities and realities of adulthood set in. This is a masterful coming-of-age novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2013

Choi's first novel was an Asian-American Literary Award winner, her second a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and her third a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and she recently received the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. So pay attention to her latest, a study of catastrophic desire. Having heard that Professor Nicholas Brodeur has a way with women, graduate student Regina Gottlieb approaches him gingerly but ends up overwhelmed by his physical appeal--and curious about his charismatic wife. With a four-city tour.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2013

In American Woman, a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Choi wraps a complex narrative around young radicals engaged in bomb making. In her last novel, PEN/Faulkner finalist A Person of Interest, a bombing sets the tone and introduces us to the pathology of a troubled mathematics professor. Now, in her fourth novel, bombs continue going off, but this time in terms of triangular carnal lust. Promising graduate student Regina Gottlieb finds herself attracted to her libertine professor, Nicholas Brodeur. However, at a Dionysian dinner party at Nicholas's house, Regina instead becomes physically entangled with Nicholas's wife, Martha. Finding herself caught in a relationship with Martha, ensnared in the drama of a broken marriage, and questioning her own scholarly ambitions, Regina sees her world beginning to explode. VERDICT As with her previous novels, Choi's talent resides in her densely layered prose and her slowing down the pace to draw readers into the inner worlds of her characters. The result is a deeply human tale of intentional mistakes, love and lust, and the search for a clearer vision of one's self. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/13.]--Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2013

In American Woman, a 2004 Pulitzer Prize finalist, Choi wraps a complex narrative around young radicals engaged in bomb making. In her last novel, PEN/Faulkner finalist A Person of Interest, a bombing sets the tone and introduces us to the pathology of a troubled mathematics professor. Now, in her fourth novel, bombs continue going off, but this time in terms of triangular carnal lust. Promising graduate student Regina Gottlieb finds herself attracted to her libertine professor, Nicholas Brodeur. However, at a Dionysian dinner party at Nicholas's house, Regina instead becomes physically entangled with Nicholas's wife, Martha. Finding herself caught in a relationship with Martha, ensnared in the drama of a broken marriage, and questioning her own scholarly ambitions, Regina sees her world beginning to explode. VERDICT As with her previous novels, Choi's talent resides in her densely layered prose and her slowing down the pace to draw readers into the inner worlds of her characters. The result is a deeply human tale of intentional mistakes, love and lust, and the search for a clearer vision of one's self. [See Prepub Alert, 1/25/13.]--Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.