Title: Vladimir*
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Author: Julia May Jonas
Rating: 3.75 stars / 5 stars
Favorite Quote: “When I was in college, the lust I felt for my professors was overwhelming. It did not matter if they were men or women, attractive or unattractive, brilliant or average, I desired them deeply. I desired them because I thought they had the power to tell me about myself.” Jonas, Julia May. Vladimir. Avid Reader, Press, 2022.
Review: Thank you to the publisher, Avid Reader Press, and the NetGalley platform, for the free e-ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.
Vladimir follows the narrator, an aging English professor, as she reckons with the realities of her husband’s infidelities, now being investigated by the college for inappropriate behaviors he displayed towards students, and her budding attraction - read borderline obsession - with a new professor, Vladimir. This novel confronts the definition of sexual misconduct and explores female aging and complicity in male sexual wrongs.
Overall, I really liked this book. I love a good campus novel (more on that below) and the scenes of this book that were based at the college definitely evoked that feeling. Julia May Jonas is an incredibly talented writer, whose language and use of metaphor truly does capture the feelings of college life (this time from the perspective of a professor instead of the perspective of a student). The flashes back to the narrator’s past relationships and her own time in school add to the feeling of nostalgia (and passion) that often clings to campus novels.
Another aspect of this narrative that worked really well was the exploration of the narrator’s [TRIGGER WARNING] disordered relationship with food. It’s been interesting, recently, the number of TikTok’s I’ve seen of younger women reckoning with their mother’s unhealthy relationships with food and trying to heal their own. This is (hopefully) an indication of a cultural shift where disordered eating is not encouraged in young girls as it has been historically. And this book is about an older woman who would have grown up in an era where disordered eating was not only encouraged but expected. And it shows. This was definitely a challenging aspect of this narrative to read, but it was also one that seemed to be really rooted in the current cultural moment.
So, what didn’t I like?
Well, first, and foremost, the ending felt rushed and didn’t seem cohesive with the rest of the novel. Originally, I found the [SPOILER ALERT] attempted kidnapping portion of the novel jarring, but as I read on, realized that this was more of a satirical play on the inverted power dynamics explored through the novel. So, if the book had resolved there, or somewhere on that path, I think my rating would have been higher. But then, after a brief confrontation between our narrator and Vladimir, Vladimir just storms off, which then allows him to be the real hero by saving the narrator and her husband from the fire. And then there’s just a brief summary of what everyone does after. By no means do I believe that a book needs to end with a resolution that ties up all the loose ends, but this ending somehow managed to messily tie up all those loose ends while also not really seeming to resolve any of the book’s tension.
There were also moments of the book that seemed unnecessarily uncomfortable. Candidly, it addresses some touchy subjects - sexual misconduct and shifting definitions of appropriate sexual behavior. And it mostly does so in a way that recognizes the emotional and sometimes traumatic experiences faced by the individuals involved in these situations. But sometimes the narrative fell flat and failed to fully explore the nuances of the situations it was presenting. (In particular, the section dealing with the narrator’s student’s recognition that racism was also at play and the narrator’s own experiences with inappropriate sexual behaviors when she was younger were brushed over and not explored despite their import and their cultural relevance.)
About that Quote: I wanted this book to be a campus novel, and quotes like this spoke to exactly what I always look for in my campus novels (and their ever enthralling cousin - dark academia). Passion that borders on obsession - questions of identity that can be explored nowhere but the insulated and isolated halls of academia. And quotes like this were the closest this book came to fulfilling what I wanted from it.
Jonas is clearly a talented writer - one who has already found her niche in the passionate and the dysfunctional.
TW for Vladimir - sexual misconduct (possibly SA), kidnapping, drugging, disordered eating, substance use, attempted s*icide, fire
Have you read Vladimir? Share your thoughts below!
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