Read Recently #5:
Blue Angel by Francine Prose
Backstory: I love novels about academica and had heard a bit about this one when it first came out in 2001. Bought a hardcover for $3 at last year’s San Francisco Library Book Sale. In December, while between books, I was looking for a solid, midrange novel, 250-300 pages and written by a woman. Blue Angel fit the bill.
Notes: Sentence by sentence, Prose is one of the best there is. Her lines are like the courses of a fine meal, laid out one at a time to be chewed and savored. It almost works against her. Blue Angel tells the story of a has-been writer in a cushy teaching job at a small Vermont college and is falling in love with a manipulative student who happens to be a much better writer than he. She’s got the college down and her plotting is confident and steady. But she does not so much inhabit her characters as she does describe them from behind glass. Because her prose (had to happen) is so strong, I didn’t mind as much, but if you’re the type of reader who doesn’t like the author standing between you and the story, it will bother you.
Verdict: This book, about writing, about sexual politics, set at a university was a slam dunk for me. But I had never read Prose’s work before. I hear if you’re familiar, it’s not one of her best.