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My Education
An intimately charged novel of desire and disaster from the author of American Woman and A Person of Interest
Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He’s said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He’s condemned on the walls of the women’s restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty—or his charismatic, volatile wife.
My Education is the story of Regina’s mistakes, which only begin in the bedroom, and end—if they do—fifteen years in the future and thousands of miles away. By turns erotic and completely catastrophic, Regina’s misadventures demonstrate what can happen when the chasm between desire and duty is too wide to bridge.
Regina Gottlieb had been warned about Professor Nicholas Brodeur long before arriving as a graduate student at his prestigious university high on a pastoral hill. He’s said to lie in the dark in his office while undergraduate women read couplets to him. He’s condemned on the walls of the women’s restroom, and enjoys films by Roman Polanski. But no one has warned Regina about his exceptional physical beauty—or his charismatic, volatile wife.
My Education is the story of Regina’s mistakes, which only begin in the bedroom, and end—if they do—fifteen years in the future and thousands of miles away. By turns erotic and completely catastrophic, Regina’s misadventures demonstrate what can happen when the chasm between desire and duty is too wide to bridge.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published July 3, 2013
353 people are currently reading
12021 people want to read
About the author
Susan Choi
23 books1,026 followersSusan Choi was born in South Bend, Indiana and was raised there and in Houston, Texas. She studied literature at Yale and writing at Cornell, and worked for several years as a fact-checker for The New Yorker.
Her latest novel, Trust Exercise, was the winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and was a national bestseller. Trust Exercise was also named a best book of 2019 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Bustle, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, The Millions, The Chicago Tribune, and TIME.
Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.
With David Remnick she co-edited the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker, and her non-fiction has appeared in publications such as Vogue, Tin House, Allure, O, and The New York Times and in anthologies such as Money Changes Everything and Brooklyn Was Mine.
A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Pete Wells and their sons Dexter and Elliot
Her latest novel, Trust Exercise, was the winner of the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction, and was a national bestseller. Trust Exercise was also named a best book of 2019 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Bustle, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, The Millions, The Chicago Tribune, and TIME.
Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.
With David Remnick she co-edited the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker, and her non-fiction has appeared in publications such as Vogue, Tin House, Allure, O, and The New York Times and in anthologies such as Money Changes Everything and Brooklyn Was Mine.
A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Pete Wells and their sons Dexter and Elliot
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 795 reviews
July 28, 2025
you see literary fiction with a low average rating. i see an opportunity to be unique.
and baby, we got there.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
i found this riveting and powerful! parts of it were stupid (like...writing so tryhard-y that it contained consistent errors in referencing itself; lit fic sex scenes, a noted crime against humanity, abounding) but i couldn't ever really put this down.
and that's good enough for me!
bottom line: i love an unpopular opinion.
and baby, we got there.
https://emmareadstoomuch.substack.com...
i found this riveting and powerful! parts of it were stupid (like...writing so tryhard-y that it contained consistent errors in referencing itself; lit fic sex scenes, a noted crime against humanity, abounding) but i couldn't ever really put this down.
and that's good enough for me!
bottom line: i love an unpopular opinion.
December 10, 2022
I’ve been thinking about unlikeable characters in books. Unlikeable not because they are “evil villains”, but unlikeable because their inner selves are revealed with tremendous depth. In my opinion, a genuinely “unlikeable” character is one the reader observes in all of his or her complexities. If a skilled author decided to put any one of us in writing, I think we’d all turn up as “unlikeable”. Not a single one of us is perfect. We’ve got our ugly sides, our little deceptions, our grievances, our miscommunications, our little quirks and failings. We may be quick to judge others. We think we know what is best for others – as if what is best for ourselves pertains to the entirety of humanity. We don’t want anyone shining a light on us or showing us our imperfections in a mirror. But that is exactly what Susan Choi seems to have mastered – the art of highlighting our flaws and insecurities. She writes about her characters with such care. I admire that in an author.
“I thought desire was duty. No trial could not be endured nor impediment smashed in desire’s holy service, or so I believed, with naïve righteousness. I didn’t grasp that desire and duty could rival each other, least of all that they most often do.”
I was enticed by the premise of this book. I love a good campus novel when done right, as it is here. Choi writes about lust and love and friendship with such precision. The story begins with the main character, Regina, as a young twenty-something enrolled in a literature graduate program at a highly esteemed university in an unnamed town in New York. I recognized the place without it being named, which is always fun. The town is not too far from me and is a place I occasionally visit. I didn’t much care for Regina when this started, but I quickly understood that this was going to end up in a place we all settle when we reach a certain age of maturity. We reflect on our younger days and try to make sense of our actions and emotions.
“Middle age only meant that the least reconcilable times of one’s life would in fact coexist until death. My youth—the demands of my young, able body, and my young understanding, whether able or not—was not going to shrink in perspective while allowing superior ripeness to gently replace it. My youth was the most stubborn, peremptory part of myself. In my most relaxed moments, it governed my being.”
There’s quite a lot of bed hopping going on in this novel. It’s not gratuitous or sentimental. The intimacy is well described. There's a gap in years between Regina’s early twenties and her “mid-life”. I’m not quite sure I’d call her middle-aged after just fourteen years, but I’ll take Choi’s word for it! I enjoyed this portion of the novel more than the first. Regina’s character growth is clearly evident, yet she’s still not turned into this most perfect being. But she understands herself a whole lot more and she takes the time to make sense of others. There’s a twist here that I hadn’t expected. I have to say, I liked the ending very much the more I think about it. Well done, Ms. Choi! I’m going to see what other treats you have to share with us! I’m definitely a fan, but I’d be hard pressed to decide who else this may appeal to. I guess I’d say those who respect seasoned writing and a razor-sharp analysis of characters’ thoughts and behaviors. Steer clear if you want a lot of action (besides the bedroom variety) and loveable characters!
“We are ghosts of ourselves, and of others, and all of these ghosts appear perfectly real.”
“I thought desire was duty. No trial could not be endured nor impediment smashed in desire’s holy service, or so I believed, with naïve righteousness. I didn’t grasp that desire and duty could rival each other, least of all that they most often do.”
I was enticed by the premise of this book. I love a good campus novel when done right, as it is here. Choi writes about lust and love and friendship with such precision. The story begins with the main character, Regina, as a young twenty-something enrolled in a literature graduate program at a highly esteemed university in an unnamed town in New York. I recognized the place without it being named, which is always fun. The town is not too far from me and is a place I occasionally visit. I didn’t much care for Regina when this started, but I quickly understood that this was going to end up in a place we all settle when we reach a certain age of maturity. We reflect on our younger days and try to make sense of our actions and emotions.
“Middle age only meant that the least reconcilable times of one’s life would in fact coexist until death. My youth—the demands of my young, able body, and my young understanding, whether able or not—was not going to shrink in perspective while allowing superior ripeness to gently replace it. My youth was the most stubborn, peremptory part of myself. In my most relaxed moments, it governed my being.”
There’s quite a lot of bed hopping going on in this novel. It’s not gratuitous or sentimental. The intimacy is well described. There's a gap in years between Regina’s early twenties and her “mid-life”. I’m not quite sure I’d call her middle-aged after just fourteen years, but I’ll take Choi’s word for it! I enjoyed this portion of the novel more than the first. Regina’s character growth is clearly evident, yet she’s still not turned into this most perfect being. But she understands herself a whole lot more and she takes the time to make sense of others. There’s a twist here that I hadn’t expected. I have to say, I liked the ending very much the more I think about it. Well done, Ms. Choi! I’m going to see what other treats you have to share with us! I’m definitely a fan, but I’d be hard pressed to decide who else this may appeal to. I guess I’d say those who respect seasoned writing and a razor-sharp analysis of characters’ thoughts and behaviors. Steer clear if you want a lot of action (besides the bedroom variety) and loveable characters!
“We are ghosts of ourselves, and of others, and all of these ghosts appear perfectly real.”
June 22, 2023
Una novela repleta de reflexiones acerca del mundo universitario, la paternidad y la maternidad, el crecimiento y desarrollo personal, lo complicadas y diversas que pueden ser las relaciones entre personas que se quieren pero que no se aman y entre las que se aman pero no se quieren y, por supuesto, entre las que se quieren y se aman: la diferencia entre lo que cada uno de los amantes desean y se sienten capaces de vivir complicado con un significativo contraste de edades y situaciones personales, la ceguera de una de las partes al interpretar, o al aceptar, las pistas que va dejando la otra, y lo poco que solemos reflexionar acerca de las consecuencias que nuestros actos y decisiones puedan tener en el destino de otras personas, confluyen en esta historia… ♪♪♪ de un amor como hay muchos igual, que les hizo comprender todo el bien, todo el mal, que les dio luz a sus viiiiidaaaaaaas, apagándolas después… ♪♪♪
Nada nuevo, pero tratado con inteligencia y cierta originalidad que hace amena una historia de inicio sorprendente y final un tanto previsible.
October 28, 2013
My Education is a brilliantly written, incomprehensibly boring novel. I use “incomprehensible” not merely as a substitute for “stultifyingly” or “incredibly,” but to convey the mystery of why and how it is so boring. The jacket notes that Choi “teaches at Princeton”), but I’m sure that has absolutely nothing to do with twenty-one year old English grad student Regina’s reverence/awe/unbridled lust for professors, male or female. And hey, everybody lusts after Regina because…let me get back to you on that one.
(spoiler alert)
On the surface, the subject matter (Hot. Lesbian. Sex! And some Hetero sex thrown in too because…why not! ) is not inherently boring. Regina Gottlieb is twenty-one years and has no hang-ups about sex with any gender. She doesn’t seem to have any hang-ups at all.
Perhaps it’s boring because of the writing style. Susan Choi is a master at mixing sentences up in a non-predictable manner. She’s like an experienced pitcher who always keeps the batter guessing. On the jacket (and let me just say, I’m in love with the jacket illustration by Jessica Abel, design by Jim Tierney. It shows the protagonist sitting up in bed, naked but for the cover pulled over her, deep in thought while another sleeps peacefully next to her. I rarely non-e-books anymore. I think I justified this hardcover the jacket. But I digress…).
Anyway, on the jacket Michael Cunningham writes “She has written lines that could be framed and displayed at a sentence festival.” I’ll agree that many of her sentences are rather amazing, but perhaps not in the way Cunningham supposes. I found myself having to re-read many long convoluted the sentences two or three times to make sense of what she was saying. What kind of jerk-off would want to go to a sentence festival, anyway? I don’t like being bored by unimaginative sentence patterns. But I don’t like having to work my ass off just to understand what’s going on. But this isn’t a matter of whether you or I am a girly-man when it comes to working through elaborate sentences. Rather, it’s a matter of what is lost when the reader has to work so hard. There ain’t nothin’ for free. When the reader has to re-read sentences or simply go at a slower pace, momentum is lost.
As I see it, Momentum in a novel refers to that mysterious “oomf” that propels a reader to turn the page so he or she can find out what happens next. Momentum is all but absent from this novel. There were many, many times, where I was sorely tempted to put the book down and never pick it up again. I finished this 296 page novel through grim determination. I have the page count memorized, because I kept peeking ahead hoping the number would somehow magically go down. I think the only reason why I kept at it was because I thought its subject matter mirrors much of my writing and so I thought it would be helpful for my own writing (which it was), but mostly I wanted to get the most out of the $26.95 I so stupidly paid for the hardcover edition.
The lack of momentum isn’t simply because Regina is an annoying character. She’s a self-absorbed, self-indulgent, amoral, self-important smarty-pants. But these are not fatal flaws in a novel. In one sense, she isn’t herself boring. She reaches out for what she wants and she frames stories in unusual and surprising ways. And yet…I didn’t care. I’m sure there are many people in this world just like Regina, but I’ve never met anyone like her, and don’t particularly care if I ever do.
It’s tempting to say her total self-absorption is why the novel is boring. But ultimately, it’s about the story. Choi is hell-bent on not writing a simple love-triangle (or quadrangle, whatever), where the heroine has to decide between one or another. No, that would be passé. Her high-powered reading buddies (according to the acknowledgements, Jhumpa Lahiri and Jennifer Egan) would make fun of her behind her back when she went to the bathroom. Choi throws a lot of sand in the reader’s face. She starts out telling us she’s fascinated with a bad-boy professor. But he’s just a distraction until we get to his wife, Martha. Also in the beginning she has casual sex with Dutra, a fellow grad student who’s so cool it takes us two hundred some pages to discover his first name).
Choi doesn’t want this to be about whether Regina is in love with Dutra or Martha and whether she’s gay or straight, because that’s been done to death and it would be so boring. So Dutra is given short shrift. Except half-way into the novel Choi realizes, oh shit, I have to have some semblance of a plot. So Dutra is given more weight and Regina starts acknowledging him as a person instead of a punch line. Here is where the novel starts to click, but no sooner than it happens, a resolution happens suddenly. I suspect Choi was really pissed that she had to resort to normal novel-y form, and cut it off as soon as she could.
But the problem is that at this point, she’s only at 212 pages. Nowhere near the magical 300 page number milestone. Don’t want to piss off the publisher. They can’t charge $26 for a 212 page hardcover. So the reader is then presented with 84 pages of a wheezy middle-aged woman fantasy about how super-duper awesome it would be to be married, have a kid, but still have former loves pining for you. Because, you know, you’re such a fabulous person that they just can’t quit you. Choi constructs a world where it’s totally cool to abandon your hubby and child for a weekend of hot-hot-hot middle-aged lesbian sex because you’re so not going to abandon your guiltless husband and child. An affair is ok because the husband’s a boring shmoe, but not an outright break-up. Besides, Regina passes up the chance for hot hot hot sex with Dutra even though she totally could have gotten away with it.
Yes, love triangles have been done to death. But the form works! Deviate from that form, and you better have absolute freaking magic on your hands because otherwise you’ve got a formless blob of a story that only masochists and sentence fetishists will love.
I haven’t read her other work, but based on this novel, Choi should give up trying to be a fiction writer. Her offhand observations on the nature of love are actually quite insightful. She would be better off writing essays or an old-fashioned memoir. Maybe Lahiri and Egan won’t have coffee with her anymore, but they clearly don’t have her best interest in mind, or they would have forced more order on this novel.
(spoiler alert)
On the surface, the subject matter (Hot. Lesbian. Sex! And some Hetero sex thrown in too because…why not! ) is not inherently boring. Regina Gottlieb is twenty-one years and has no hang-ups about sex with any gender. She doesn’t seem to have any hang-ups at all.
Perhaps it’s boring because of the writing style. Susan Choi is a master at mixing sentences up in a non-predictable manner. She’s like an experienced pitcher who always keeps the batter guessing. On the jacket (and let me just say, I’m in love with the jacket illustration by Jessica Abel, design by Jim Tierney. It shows the protagonist sitting up in bed, naked but for the cover pulled over her, deep in thought while another sleeps peacefully next to her. I rarely non-e-books anymore. I think I justified this hardcover the jacket. But I digress…).
Anyway, on the jacket Michael Cunningham writes “She has written lines that could be framed and displayed at a sentence festival.” I’ll agree that many of her sentences are rather amazing, but perhaps not in the way Cunningham supposes. I found myself having to re-read many long convoluted the sentences two or three times to make sense of what she was saying. What kind of jerk-off would want to go to a sentence festival, anyway? I don’t like being bored by unimaginative sentence patterns. But I don’t like having to work my ass off just to understand what’s going on. But this isn’t a matter of whether you or I am a girly-man when it comes to working through elaborate sentences. Rather, it’s a matter of what is lost when the reader has to work so hard. There ain’t nothin’ for free. When the reader has to re-read sentences or simply go at a slower pace, momentum is lost.
As I see it, Momentum in a novel refers to that mysterious “oomf” that propels a reader to turn the page so he or she can find out what happens next. Momentum is all but absent from this novel. There were many, many times, where I was sorely tempted to put the book down and never pick it up again. I finished this 296 page novel through grim determination. I have the page count memorized, because I kept peeking ahead hoping the number would somehow magically go down. I think the only reason why I kept at it was because I thought its subject matter mirrors much of my writing and so I thought it would be helpful for my own writing (which it was), but mostly I wanted to get the most out of the $26.95 I so stupidly paid for the hardcover edition.
The lack of momentum isn’t simply because Regina is an annoying character. She’s a self-absorbed, self-indulgent, amoral, self-important smarty-pants. But these are not fatal flaws in a novel. In one sense, she isn’t herself boring. She reaches out for what she wants and she frames stories in unusual and surprising ways. And yet…I didn’t care. I’m sure there are many people in this world just like Regina, but I’ve never met anyone like her, and don’t particularly care if I ever do.
It’s tempting to say her total self-absorption is why the novel is boring. But ultimately, it’s about the story. Choi is hell-bent on not writing a simple love-triangle (or quadrangle, whatever), where the heroine has to decide between one or another. No, that would be passé. Her high-powered reading buddies (according to the acknowledgements, Jhumpa Lahiri and Jennifer Egan) would make fun of her behind her back when she went to the bathroom. Choi throws a lot of sand in the reader’s face. She starts out telling us she’s fascinated with a bad-boy professor. But he’s just a distraction until we get to his wife, Martha. Also in the beginning she has casual sex with Dutra, a fellow grad student who’s so cool it takes us two hundred some pages to discover his first name).
Choi doesn’t want this to be about whether Regina is in love with Dutra or Martha and whether she’s gay or straight, because that’s been done to death and it would be so boring. So Dutra is given short shrift. Except half-way into the novel Choi realizes, oh shit, I have to have some semblance of a plot. So Dutra is given more weight and Regina starts acknowledging him as a person instead of a punch line. Here is where the novel starts to click, but no sooner than it happens, a resolution happens suddenly. I suspect Choi was really pissed that she had to resort to normal novel-y form, and cut it off as soon as she could.
But the problem is that at this point, she’s only at 212 pages. Nowhere near the magical 300 page number milestone. Don’t want to piss off the publisher. They can’t charge $26 for a 212 page hardcover. So the reader is then presented with 84 pages of a wheezy middle-aged woman fantasy about how super-duper awesome it would be to be married, have a kid, but still have former loves pining for you. Because, you know, you’re such a fabulous person that they just can’t quit you. Choi constructs a world where it’s totally cool to abandon your hubby and child for a weekend of hot-hot-hot middle-aged lesbian sex because you’re so not going to abandon your guiltless husband and child. An affair is ok because the husband’s a boring shmoe, but not an outright break-up. Besides, Regina passes up the chance for hot hot hot sex with Dutra even though she totally could have gotten away with it.
Yes, love triangles have been done to death. But the form works! Deviate from that form, and you better have absolute freaking magic on your hands because otherwise you’ve got a formless blob of a story that only masochists and sentence fetishists will love.
I haven’t read her other work, but based on this novel, Choi should give up trying to be a fiction writer. Her offhand observations on the nature of love are actually quite insightful. She would be better off writing essays or an old-fashioned memoir. Maybe Lahiri and Egan won’t have coffee with her anymore, but they clearly don’t have her best interest in mind, or they would have forced more order on this novel.
August 16, 2013
For me, reading this book was absolute torture. I had high hopes, since it was marked fairly highly on EW's list. For me, it was a complete letdown. Here are my major criticisms of the book (for what they are worth):
1) The writing and prose seemed utterly pretentious. Don't just use high-level words because you can, use them because they make sense in a particular setting. The prose is just rambling at times, with paragraphs that stretch over two pages, with seemingly no point.
2) Related to 1), is it really necessary to throw in extremely vulgar language occasionally? If the point is to break up the otherwise fairly monotonous writing, then it was accomplished.
3) What is the motivation of any of the characters, other than pure hedonism, hubris, and narcissism? To me, it was not obvious why any of the characters were doing anything. Even the acts of love seemed completely random. The main characters just did what they felt like at any particular moment, without any thought at all as to potential consequences, etc.
4) I don't think there is a single person in the book that seems likeable, at least to me. While I can sympathize with all the characters and their situations, I don't think I would like any of them if I met them.
It is entirely possible that I just didn't get it and completely missed the point. Or maybe the point of the book was exactly what I perceive as its shortcomings. In either case, the book to me just seemed weird and senseless.
1) The writing and prose seemed utterly pretentious. Don't just use high-level words because you can, use them because they make sense in a particular setting. The prose is just rambling at times, with paragraphs that stretch over two pages, with seemingly no point.
2) Related to 1), is it really necessary to throw in extremely vulgar language occasionally? If the point is to break up the otherwise fairly monotonous writing, then it was accomplished.
3) What is the motivation of any of the characters, other than pure hedonism, hubris, and narcissism? To me, it was not obvious why any of the characters were doing anything. Even the acts of love seemed completely random. The main characters just did what they felt like at any particular moment, without any thought at all as to potential consequences, etc.
4) I don't think there is a single person in the book that seems likeable, at least to me. While I can sympathize with all the characters and their situations, I don't think I would like any of them if I met them.
It is entirely possible that I just didn't get it and completely missed the point. Or maybe the point of the book was exactly what I perceive as its shortcomings. In either case, the book to me just seemed weird and senseless.
July 16, 2013
Novels about naïve college-aged students who fall into the throes of older, charismatic professors are nothing new; neither are novels about love that veers into obsession. Susan Choi���s latest novel incorporates both these themes, but in a distinctive way, spiced with strong insights into the very nature of love, marriage and forgiveness.
Rather early on in the book, Ms. Choi throws a curve ball at the reader, turning our preconceived notions about what the book will be about on its ear. Everything else in the book will radiate from this plot twist and it is unfair to discuss it – which makes even amateur reviewing particularly challenging.
The bare bones of the plot –without spoilers – are these: a first-year graduate student in literature named Regina is fascinated by the legends that surround a particular professor…so much so that she signs up for his class. She is appointed his TA, and gradually, falls under the orbit of the professor – Nicholas Brodeur – and his magnetic, free-spirited wife, Martha.
The writing is luscious (with the exception of a few wince-worthy sex scenes) and finely-crafted. But it is the themes that entice the reader. Through her characters, the author asks the reader to consider the thin lines between lightning-bolt love, emotional intimacy, friendship, and sexual ardor. What happens when the lines blur? Can they co-exist? What if two lovers are in completely different places? As one character says to the other, “I don’t feel the way you do. I don’t mean I don’t share your emotions. That when you feel happy I’m sad. I mean something more basic. Not type but degree. Whatever I feel, I don’t feel it the way that you do.”
Ms. Choi also takes a close look at the difference in love at different stages. In her early 20s, Regina refers to herself as “a perfect impostor”. She says, “Only love mattered to me: the singularity of it, the damnable difficulty of it, the solution I knew must lie just out of reach.” She is in turns, obsessive, insecure, tortured, yearning, and demanding; unselfishness and generosity of spirit have little to do with it. Her lover is far more nuanced, given the years that separate them.
Secondary characters, such as Regina’s brilliant housemate and one-time lover Dutra, a surgical resident who lives by his own strict codes of love, are brilliantly rendered, as are the other characters. Regina – who narrates the entire book – is not particularly “likeable”, but in her own selfishness and struggle to grasp what it means to love, she comes across as believable. Recommended.
Rather early on in the book, Ms. Choi throws a curve ball at the reader, turning our preconceived notions about what the book will be about on its ear. Everything else in the book will radiate from this plot twist and it is unfair to discuss it – which makes even amateur reviewing particularly challenging.
The bare bones of the plot –without spoilers – are these: a first-year graduate student in literature named Regina is fascinated by the legends that surround a particular professor…so much so that she signs up for his class. She is appointed his TA, and gradually, falls under the orbit of the professor – Nicholas Brodeur – and his magnetic, free-spirited wife, Martha.
The writing is luscious (with the exception of a few wince-worthy sex scenes) and finely-crafted. But it is the themes that entice the reader. Through her characters, the author asks the reader to consider the thin lines between lightning-bolt love, emotional intimacy, friendship, and sexual ardor. What happens when the lines blur? Can they co-exist? What if two lovers are in completely different places? As one character says to the other, “I don’t feel the way you do. I don’t mean I don’t share your emotions. That when you feel happy I’m sad. I mean something more basic. Not type but degree. Whatever I feel, I don’t feel it the way that you do.”
Ms. Choi also takes a close look at the difference in love at different stages. In her early 20s, Regina refers to herself as “a perfect impostor”. She says, “Only love mattered to me: the singularity of it, the damnable difficulty of it, the solution I knew must lie just out of reach.” She is in turns, obsessive, insecure, tortured, yearning, and demanding; unselfishness and generosity of spirit have little to do with it. Her lover is far more nuanced, given the years that separate them.
Secondary characters, such as Regina’s brilliant housemate and one-time lover Dutra, a surgical resident who lives by his own strict codes of love, are brilliantly rendered, as are the other characters. Regina – who narrates the entire book – is not particularly “likeable”, but in her own selfishness and struggle to grasp what it means to love, she comes across as believable. Recommended.
June 9, 2022
[4+] I have come to expect the unexpected with Choi. Despite the blurbs, this novel is not your basic campus novel about a student-professor affair. And none of the characters are particularly likable. So perhaps readers felt cheated, thus the low GR rating. Interesting is a bland word but that's what I kept thinking as I read. So interesting! And so smart! The plot takes many unexpected turns, the writing is tantalizing and the characters thorny and multi-layered.
August 27, 2021
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2 ½ stars (rounded up)
Sometimes books really deserve their average rating...and this is one of those cases. As I am writing this the majority of readers have given My Education three stars, and more reviewers have given it 2 stars than 5. I know that at the end of the day ‘ratings’ are insubstantial, not reliable gauges, yadda yadda but readers who are considering picking up My Education should bear its score in mind….it’s low for a reason.
I for one can't say whether I disliked it or not. There were many elements I did not appreciate but I could also see what the novel was trying to do. For the most part, it was a rather funny novel and there were many passages and scenes that were almost endearingly offbeat.
Susan Cho’s satire—of academia, of ‘affairs’ between a younger & naive person and an older married one, and of all sorts of people—did occasionally hit the mark, and the narrator’s caustic commentary did amused me. But, and it’s a big but, Cho’s hyperbolic and bombastic language made for a dense and ultimately not very rewarding reading experience. She has a Joycean approach to syntax, with baffling backwards-sounding sentences that go on forever and are punctuated by highfalutin words that more often than not do not fit the context they are in. Also, I couldn’t help but to unfavourably compare this novel with two others I’ve read in 2020, Pizza Girl and Luster, both of which explore dynamics similar to the ones My Education . Whereas I found those books to be highly absorbing and I enjoyed their ‘effervescent’ prose, My Education is bogged down by its author’s circumlocutory and turgid style. At times it seemed that I had to find my way through a discombobulating and never-ending warren of florid sentences, with little success. I was perplexed by Cho’s writing, especially since it did 'sound' like the authentic ‘voice’ of her main character. Would Regina really make such ostentatious metaphors and penetrating if convoluted observations and assessments? At times her comments seemed to originate from a perspective outside of her own one.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. While this is by no means a plot-driven narrative, it does have a storyline, however feeble, and it unfolds as follows: Regina, the type of protagonist who should have and could have remained unnamed, is a directionless graduate student who upon hearing about Professor Nicholas Brodeur’s ill repute decides to join his class and attract his attention. For reasons that are never truly disclosed to the readers Regina is attracted to Nicholas because of the allegations against him... her excitement at his sexual misconduct was certainly bewildering. Was she aroused by the idea of his illicit behaviour? Who knows! Her true feelings and motivations are lost in her pleonastic inner-monologue. Which, as I’ve mentioned above, just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of her persona. She’s naïve, childish, inward-looking (yet, her act of introspections added little to her characterisation), impulsive, and socially myopic. The author tries to emphasise her ‘youth’, and in the process she made her seem closer to a teenager than a twenty-one-year-old (time and again we are reminded of her ignorance, and lack of interest or understanding, of what being a mother entails...is she 12?). Anyway, Regina, for obscurely perverse reasons, ‘pursues’ Nicholas, who isn’t as alluring a man as she’d hoped. Cho, in fact, subverts the trope of the young ingénue student who begins an affair with an older charismatic professor as Regina’s liaison is not with Nicholas but his wife. She falls in love within a few pages, lusts after this wife, Martha, for reasons that aren’t that clear (which is the norm in this book). More perplexing still is that Martha reciprocates, to a certain degree at least, Regina’s infatuation. The sex between these two women is awfully over the top, and I don’t I’ve ever come across such bad sex scenes (this book was nominated, and should have won, for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award). Regina lusting for Martha makes for 40% of this novel. They either have petty squabbles or convoluted sex (“I would have liked a single rope to bind us together, with tightly stacked coils, so that we formed a sort of Siamese mummy”) . Readers will probably not root for them as they are unlikable or unsympathetic as each other. The male characters, however flawed and problematic, at least had discernible personalities and could even be quite amusing.
The narrative then takes us away from the 1990s and into the late 2000s where we witness how Regina’s life has come to look similar to Martha’s own one. I didn’t particularly like the message here: the three main women in this novel are all at one point or another mothers and wives. While the male characters had character arcs, Regina and Martha...I could not for the life of me understand what compelled them to act they way they did. Given that this novel popped up in ‘best campus/academia’ novels I was hoping that Regina’s studies would play more of a role in her story, but they don’t. Even when we see her as a ‘proper’ grown-up, her work and interests remain off page.
While I liked the idea of this novel, the execution was not my cup of tea. Cho’s lampooning style could be amusing, but then we would get things like: “It was deep winter now, the season when suicides rained down like apples from the limbs of the gorge-spanning bridges” or “something in her bearing, an extremely compressed capability, suggested to me that she might be a butcher, or a construction foreperson, as well as a lesbian”.
I just don’t know what to make of this book. It had the right ingredients for a funny yet cutting read but Cho’s overplays her already intentionally exaggerated style. Then we have two boring and undefined main characters, many failed attempts at subversiveness, and a repetitive and ultimately skin-deep story...and you kind of lost me. What pissed me off the most was a scene towards the end where Cho makes a character who was sexually abused have a cameo appearance where she discloses this to Regina for no real reason other than for some shock-value content. The tone in this scene was so off, it was almost gleeful...which, yikes. That’s fucked up.
When Regina tells us “Reader, I grew up”, I wanted to call out bullshit because Regina, darling, you did no such fucking thing. The ending really wants to paint her as being more mature and sensible, but it doesn’t work as we only glimpse these traits in the very last few pages. Why was Martha interested in Regina anyway? Why would anyone be in love with someone like Martha ? Search me!
Last, but not least, because of Cho’s extravagant and syntax-averse writing this 300-page novel read like a 600-page tome. Still, I did manage to finish it, and it was probably thanks to Nicholas, Dutra, and Laurence who kept me interested in the story. Also, to be fair, Cho’s commentary and her observations could be spot on...then again, more often than not, a good point would be lost in a sea of gaudy and seemingly never-ending asides.
2 ½ stars (rounded up)
“Love bestows such a dangerous sense of entitlement.”
Sometimes books really deserve their average rating...and this is one of those cases. As I am writing this the majority of readers have given My Education three stars, and more reviewers have given it 2 stars than 5. I know that at the end of the day ‘ratings’ are insubstantial, not reliable gauges, yadda yadda but readers who are considering picking up My Education should bear its score in mind….it’s low for a reason.
I for one can't say whether I disliked it or not. There were many elements I did not appreciate but I could also see what the novel was trying to do. For the most part, it was a rather funny novel and there were many passages and scenes that were almost endearingly offbeat.
Susan Cho’s satire—of academia, of ‘affairs’ between a younger & naive person and an older married one, and of all sorts of people—did occasionally hit the mark, and the narrator’s caustic commentary did amused me. But, and it’s a big but, Cho’s hyperbolic and bombastic language made for a dense and ultimately not very rewarding reading experience. She has a Joycean approach to syntax, with baffling backwards-sounding sentences that go on forever and are punctuated by highfalutin words that more often than not do not fit the context they are in. Also, I couldn’t help but to unfavourably compare this novel with two others I’ve read in 2020, Pizza Girl and Luster, both of which explore dynamics similar to the ones My Education . Whereas I found those books to be highly absorbing and I enjoyed their ‘effervescent’ prose, My Education is bogged down by its author’s circumlocutory and turgid style. At times it seemed that I had to find my way through a discombobulating and never-ending warren of florid sentences, with little success. I was perplexed by Cho’s writing, especially since it did 'sound' like the authentic ‘voice’ of her main character. Would Regina really make such ostentatious metaphors and penetrating if convoluted observations and assessments? At times her comments seemed to originate from a perspective outside of her own one.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. While this is by no means a plot-driven narrative, it does have a storyline, however feeble, and it unfolds as follows: Regina, the type of protagonist who should have and could have remained unnamed, is a directionless graduate student who upon hearing about Professor Nicholas Brodeur’s ill repute decides to join his class and attract his attention. For reasons that are never truly disclosed to the readers Regina is attracted to Nicholas because of the allegations against him... her excitement at his sexual misconduct was certainly bewildering. Was she aroused by the idea of his illicit behaviour? Who knows! Her true feelings and motivations are lost in her pleonastic inner-monologue. Which, as I’ve mentioned above, just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of her persona. She’s naïve, childish, inward-looking (yet, her act of introspections added little to her characterisation), impulsive, and socially myopic. The author tries to emphasise her ‘youth’, and in the process she made her seem closer to a teenager than a twenty-one-year-old (time and again we are reminded of her ignorance, and lack of interest or understanding, of what being a mother entails...is she 12?). Anyway, Regina, for obscurely perverse reasons, ‘pursues’ Nicholas, who isn’t as alluring a man as she’d hoped. Cho, in fact, subverts the trope of the young ingénue student who begins an affair with an older charismatic professor as Regina’s liaison is not with Nicholas but his wife. She falls in love within a few pages, lusts after this wife, Martha, for reasons that aren’t that clear (which is the norm in this book). More perplexing still is that Martha reciprocates, to a certain degree at least, Regina’s infatuation. The sex between these two women is awfully over the top, and I don’t I’ve ever come across such bad sex scenes (this book was nominated, and should have won, for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award). Regina lusting for Martha makes for 40% of this novel. They either have petty squabbles or convoluted sex (“I would have liked a single rope to bind us together, with tightly stacked coils, so that we formed a sort of Siamese mummy”) . Readers will probably not root for them as they are unlikable or unsympathetic as each other. The male characters, however flawed and problematic, at least had discernible personalities and could even be quite amusing.
The narrative then takes us away from the 1990s and into the late 2000s where we witness how Regina’s life has come to look similar to Martha’s own one. I didn’t particularly like the message here: the three main women in this novel are all at one point or another mothers and wives. While the male characters had character arcs, Regina and Martha...I could not for the life of me understand what compelled them to act they way they did. Given that this novel popped up in ‘best campus/academia’ novels I was hoping that Regina’s studies would play more of a role in her story, but they don’t. Even when we see her as a ‘proper’ grown-up, her work and interests remain off page.
While I liked the idea of this novel, the execution was not my cup of tea. Cho’s lampooning style could be amusing, but then we would get things like: “It was deep winter now, the season when suicides rained down like apples from the limbs of the gorge-spanning bridges” or “something in her bearing, an extremely compressed capability, suggested to me that she might be a butcher, or a construction foreperson, as well as a lesbian”.
I just don’t know what to make of this book. It had the right ingredients for a funny yet cutting read but Cho’s overplays her already intentionally exaggerated style. Then we have two boring and undefined main characters, many failed attempts at subversiveness, and a repetitive and ultimately skin-deep story...and you kind of lost me. What pissed me off the most was a scene towards the end where Cho makes a character who was sexually abused have a cameo appearance where she discloses this to Regina for no real reason other than for some shock-value content. The tone in this scene was so off, it was almost gleeful...which, yikes. That’s fucked up.
When Regina tells us “Reader, I grew up”, I wanted to call out bullshit because Regina, darling, you did no such fucking thing. The ending really wants to paint her as being more mature and sensible, but it doesn’t work as we only glimpse these traits in the very last few pages. Why was Martha interested in Regina anyway? Why would anyone be in love with someone like Martha ? Search me!
Last, but not least, because of Cho’s extravagant and syntax-averse writing this 300-page novel read like a 600-page tome. Still, I did manage to finish it, and it was probably thanks to Nicholas, Dutra, and Laurence who kept me interested in the story. Also, to be fair, Cho’s commentary and her observations could be spot on...then again, more often than not, a good point would be lost in a sea of gaudy and seemingly never-ending asides.
April 30, 2020
"A firm push, on smooth waters. After I'd traveled the distance, I saw what he'd done."
My Education is being pushed as a tawdry cautionary tale of student-prof obsession, sex, and ruination, when it is really a decades-spanning tale of a love square that just... won't... die, and ultimately a rather grown-up and romantic one at that.
The grandiose/pathetic ambitions of the Ivy League Ivory Tower circa 1992 in an unnamed Ithaca (possibly the fifth character in the love pentagon) turn out to be low-hanging fruit in the hands of Choi, who, like fellow Cornell MFA Lorrie Moore, must love intellectual life to skewer it so exactly through the heart.
Perhaps doing Moore one better, Choi uses her satirical talents sparingly, in edgy sum-greater-than-the-parts alchemy with evocative descriptions of Ithaca in many seasons, New York proper (although 9/11, once again, is handled too heavily for me), and Northern California, and slow-burning and satisfying portraits of her four principals: Regina, Martha, Nicholas, and Dutra.
During the book's deceptively arch opening sections, Regina's precociously prurient voice (and actions) reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's description of idiot savant politician Rex Mottram:
In Regina's case—and Dutra's, Martha's, and Nicholas's, whom these sentences also describe—it's immaturity creating the deficit, not character. The tension that comes from not really being sure if that's the case or not is the tension of youth, of life (nobody wants to be "an organ kept alive in a laboratory"!), and Choi's complex and authentic recreation of it here four times over is thrilling.
Recommended for grown-ups.
My Education is being pushed as a tawdry cautionary tale of student-prof obsession, sex, and ruination, when it is really a decades-spanning tale of a love square that just... won't... die, and ultimately a rather grown-up and romantic one at that.
The grandiose/pathetic ambitions of the Ivy League Ivory Tower circa 1992 in an unnamed Ithaca (possibly the fifth character in the love pentagon) turn out to be low-hanging fruit in the hands of Choi, who, like fellow Cornell MFA Lorrie Moore, must love intellectual life to skewer it so exactly through the heart.
Perhaps doing Moore one better, Choi uses her satirical talents sparingly, in edgy sum-greater-than-the-parts alchemy with evocative descriptions of Ithaca in many seasons, New York proper (although 9/11, once again, is handled too heavily for me), and Northern California, and slow-burning and satisfying portraits of her four principals: Regina, Martha, Nicholas, and Dutra.
During the book's deceptively arch opening sections, Regina's precociously prurient voice (and actions) reminded me of Evelyn Waugh's description of idiot savant politician Rex Mottram:
"He simply wasn't all there. He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce."
In Regina's case—and Dutra's, Martha's, and Nicholas's, whom these sentences also describe—it's immaturity creating the deficit, not character. The tension that comes from not really being sure if that's the case or not is the tension of youth, of life (nobody wants to be "an organ kept alive in a laboratory"!), and Choi's complex and authentic recreation of it here four times over is thrilling.
Recommended for grown-ups.
July 15, 2013
Excessive! I've read her prior books and she's a good author ... but this book is excessive from the word go in both good and bad ways. The prose is rich, complex, and interesting ... but excessively so. The emotional intensity is, surprisingly, sustained during the whole 1992 part of the story, but it is clearly excessive. The sexual scenes are totally excessive. The plot is excessive but hard to put down.
On the other hand, the 2007 part of the book is a total failure IMHO. There is no transition for how she goes from a broken woman and a penniless, hopeless alcoholic to a famous NY writer and a very conventional wife and mother. Then a grab bag of additional, unnecessary, and ... yes... excessive ... plot elements are thrown in, helter skelter: East versus West medical approaches and hospital politics, Alicia's sexual abuse as a child, Joachim's ridiculous and annoying blog entries, the Waldorf school values up against technology, the reemergence of Dutra as the heartbroken lover of Martha (please, give me a break), philanthropist extraordinaire, and lonely soul, one more fling with Martha (will Matthew care? Is he a three-dimensional character? No.). She gets great reviews, but I really think this last part failed miserably. What do you all think?
On the other hand, the 2007 part of the book is a total failure IMHO. There is no transition for how she goes from a broken woman and a penniless, hopeless alcoholic to a famous NY writer and a very conventional wife and mother. Then a grab bag of additional, unnecessary, and ... yes... excessive ... plot elements are thrown in, helter skelter: East versus West medical approaches and hospital politics, Alicia's sexual abuse as a child, Joachim's ridiculous and annoying blog entries, the Waldorf school values up against technology, the reemergence of Dutra as the heartbroken lover of Martha (please, give me a break), philanthropist extraordinaire, and lonely soul, one more fling with Martha (will Matthew care? Is he a three-dimensional character? No.). She gets great reviews, but I really think this last part failed miserably. What do you all think?
May 17, 2014
This book's graphic artsy-comic cover attracted me, but I hated everything inside it, especially the writing. The story is about Regina Gottlieb, the world's most self-obsessed grad student ever, who in 1992 gets involved with her roommate, while stalking the object of her lusty obsession - an infamous professor who becomes first her mentor and employer and then friend and then cuckolded victim of her adultery and then her lover and then back to being her friend again. The reader is given no reason to believe that Regina is remarkable in any way, yet somehow everybody in the story is struck by her somehow, bestows immediate trust and respect upon her, never forgets her and never holds any of the terrible, unforgivable things she does to them against her.
Choi the writer doesn't say what something is or how it looks, or what any character is thinking; but instead ascribes hidden attributes and contradictory assumptions to everything, within tortuously constructed yet meaningless run-on sentences. To quote her, I found the entire book a "refutation of some logic I couldn't follow". Hated, because annoying inconsistencies. Annoyed, because grammatically complex and faddy. On page 266 she pops out and actually addresses us, "Reader, I grew up" (gak!) and then 24 pages later Regina is still so selfish she flies from NY to CA and has sex with her ex instead of first checking in on her suicidal friend.
Somebody who checked this book out before me crossed out superfluous verbage and underlined improper grammar beginning on paragraph 2 of page 1 and on through to page 39; the writing never improved, so I assume the book was returned unread to the library. I never bailed but hated it all the way through, and am left with so many outraged questions: How does one wave an arm "wildly and sadly"? How would a visitor to a home recognize a bathroom was "very tastefully, thoughtlessly" done? Who confuses the smell of sex with that of roasted chicken? What breastfeeding new mother is sneaking around having crazy illicit sex all day every day? Why would a mom carry a diaper bag and a handbag? How is a red wine "greenish"? Cleanly odorous flesh, what? How does the rich dad not have a car seat in his car?
If the author's intent was to be as salaciously offensive as possible, then she should feel proud.
Choi the writer doesn't say what something is or how it looks, or what any character is thinking; but instead ascribes hidden attributes and contradictory assumptions to everything, within tortuously constructed yet meaningless run-on sentences. To quote her, I found the entire book a "refutation of some logic I couldn't follow". Hated, because annoying inconsistencies. Annoyed, because grammatically complex and faddy. On page 266 she pops out and actually addresses us, "Reader, I grew up" (gak!) and then 24 pages later Regina is still so selfish she flies from NY to CA and has sex with her ex instead of first checking in on her suicidal friend.
Somebody who checked this book out before me crossed out superfluous verbage and underlined improper grammar beginning on paragraph 2 of page 1 and on through to page 39; the writing never improved, so I assume the book was returned unread to the library. I never bailed but hated it all the way through, and am left with so many outraged questions: How does one wave an arm "wildly and sadly"? How would a visitor to a home recognize a bathroom was "very tastefully, thoughtlessly" done? Who confuses the smell of sex with that of roasted chicken? What breastfeeding new mother is sneaking around having crazy illicit sex all day every day? Why would a mom carry a diaper bag and a handbag? How is a red wine "greenish"? Cleanly odorous flesh, what? How does the rich dad not have a car seat in his car?
If the author's intent was to be as salaciously offensive as possible, then she should feel proud.
February 7, 2016
I think Susan Choi is an excellent writer and I have liked one or two of her other novels, so I was very disappointed in My Education. None of the characters are likable or sympathetic; and the plot, actions, and dialogue seem contrived and unrealistic. Is this book supposed to be 50 Shades of Gray for academics? It was just a little bit too self-involved in the cloistered world of academic self-importance to elicit my general interest.
As a graduate student, Regina wanders around in a cold, drunken haze, sleeping alternately with her roommate (Dutra), her professor (Nick), or her professor's wife (Martha). Fourteen years later, she miraculously becomes a successful writer with a husband, a child, and a beautiful home in Brooklyn. Frustratingly, the transformation is never explained!
Dutra is supposed to be a brilliant, devil-may-care stoner/medical student who is so pure and idealistic that he becomes a lifesaving surgeon in NYC's most prestigious hospital, but is fired on a trumped-up sexual harassment charge over some sort of political intrigue. Once again, this plot twist is never explained. (Note: Dutra also has some sort of short-lived marriage with a woman who is described as being much older than her professed 39 years, but the whirlwind courtship and rapid disintegration of their marriage is once again....never explained!)
We are told at the end of the novel that Dutra has always loved Martha but "gave her up" for Regina. Will this game of sexual musical chairs never end? So Regina orchestrates a meet-cute opportunity through a complicated ruse that begins with chatting up Martha's son (Joachim) via his sheepfarming blog (oh, how very 21st century!) and ends with her flying across the country to sleep with Martha before setting Martha up on a quasi-blind-date with Dutra.
Choi seems to focus more on emotional fugue states than coherent actions or motivations, making this book somewhat tedious to slog through.
As a graduate student, Regina wanders around in a cold, drunken haze, sleeping alternately with her roommate (Dutra), her professor (Nick), or her professor's wife (Martha). Fourteen years later, she miraculously becomes a successful writer with a husband, a child, and a beautiful home in Brooklyn. Frustratingly, the transformation is never explained!
Dutra is supposed to be a brilliant, devil-may-care stoner/medical student who is so pure and idealistic that he becomes a lifesaving surgeon in NYC's most prestigious hospital, but is fired on a trumped-up sexual harassment charge over some sort of political intrigue. Once again, this plot twist is never explained. (Note: Dutra also has some sort of short-lived marriage with a woman who is described as being much older than her professed 39 years, but the whirlwind courtship and rapid disintegration of their marriage is once again....never explained!)
We are told at the end of the novel that Dutra has always loved Martha but "gave her up" for Regina. Will this game of sexual musical chairs never end? So Regina orchestrates a meet-cute opportunity through a complicated ruse that begins with chatting up Martha's son (Joachim) via his sheepfarming blog (oh, how very 21st century!) and ends with her flying across the country to sleep with Martha before setting Martha up on a quasi-blind-date with Dutra.
Choi seems to focus more on emotional fugue states than coherent actions or motivations, making this book somewhat tedious to slog through.
April 24, 2013
This is a great and terrifying novel. I believe it comes out in July, but I got an early copy because Susan’s an old friend of mine. In fact, we had a two-person independent study about our writing when we were college students. And then we hung out all the time when she was a graduate student at Cornell and this novel is loosely based on those years, so it was eerie. More eerie, though, was how amazing Susan’s prose is. No one writes better sentences and keeps them moving, looping, twisting. What’s so amazing here is the tension is created not only by what will happen next but the mystery of how the graduate school heroine—prone to bad choices and behavior, often quite immature—is going to become the sophisticated narrator who describes her.
September 15, 2023
3.5 stars
When I was about halfway through My Education, I was sure that I would give it two stars. But the more I read, the more I found myself enjoying this book. Choi's writing is visceral. If you're looking for characters who are "likeable" this is not the book for you. If you’re not a fan of love triangles (or is it a square?) with horrible people, this is not the book for you. Most of the characters in My Education are selfish, flawed, insufferable....and human. They’re not good humans but they are humans 😂 And the ending is surprisingly sweet and gives its infuriating characters some much needed closure. Is this review incredibly vague? Absolutely. But I don't want to give too much away, I want other readers to experience this book for themselves. But I will say I'm excited to read the rest of Susan Choi's books.
When I was about halfway through My Education, I was sure that I would give it two stars. But the more I read, the more I found myself enjoying this book. Choi's writing is visceral. If you're looking for characters who are "likeable" this is not the book for you. If you’re not a fan of love triangles (or is it a square?) with horrible people, this is not the book for you. Most of the characters in My Education are selfish, flawed, insufferable....and human. They’re not good humans but they are humans 😂 And the ending is surprisingly sweet and gives its infuriating characters some much needed closure. Is this review incredibly vague? Absolutely. But I don't want to give too much away, I want other readers to experience this book for themselves. But I will say I'm excited to read the rest of Susan Choi's books.
July 17, 2013
Regina Gottlieb narrates her adult education in a frank, unsentimental style, starting from her first days in graduate school in the early 1990's and ending in middle age--I won't divulge the year, as Choi doesn't either, until she gets there. There are only the two time periods that are magnified; the fill-in years are revealed in retrospect and reference, so that the reader also learns about Regina at a gradual pace. Regina's education here is less academic and more of a sexual and emotional one. In short, it is a coming-of-age and a look back.
This is the kind of languid narrative that takes the long view of a life, and allows for deep reflection of the narrator and asks for concentration from the reader. Events move along at a dilatory pace, starting when Regina is just 21. These few years of her life are primordial, sticky, and really messy, when the superego isn't yet developed, and she acts on her own self-interest. Her entanglements with a married couple of charismatic English professors and their infant son are a time of watery boundaries and shrill desire.
Choi balances optimism with cynicism quite well; I was expecting her to do the hip thing which she does do, but she goes further, allows Regina to actually grow and, as she says in middle age:
"Middle age only meant that the least reconcilable times of one's life would in fact coexist until death."
That will make more sense when you read the long passages of self-analysis.
There were times I felt a little restive while reading, wanting the pace to speed up a little. The book is mostly written in a passive voice, recalling, subjecting each moment to scrutiny. But, by the end, you are satisfied, and understand that the navel gazing is what it is--a book of contemplation.
This is the kind of languid narrative that takes the long view of a life, and allows for deep reflection of the narrator and asks for concentration from the reader. Events move along at a dilatory pace, starting when Regina is just 21. These few years of her life are primordial, sticky, and really messy, when the superego isn't yet developed, and she acts on her own self-interest. Her entanglements with a married couple of charismatic English professors and their infant son are a time of watery boundaries and shrill desire.
Choi balances optimism with cynicism quite well; I was expecting her to do the hip thing which she does do, but she goes further, allows Regina to actually grow and, as she says in middle age:
"Middle age only meant that the least reconcilable times of one's life would in fact coexist until death."
That will make more sense when you read the long passages of self-analysis.
There were times I felt a little restive while reading, wanting the pace to speed up a little. The book is mostly written in a passive voice, recalling, subjecting each moment to scrutiny. But, by the end, you are satisfied, and understand that the navel gazing is what it is--a book of contemplation.
July 20, 2015
If this wasn't by one of my favorite authors, I probably wouldn't have read it. A novel about a college student getting involved with a professor? Yawn.
Luckily it is by Susan Choi and I know she's fantastic and sure enough this is not your everyday novel about a student/prof affair. It's not really about that at all, even if that initially appears to be the direction it's headed.
Choi's prose here looks stronger than I've ever seen it. Every sentence is filled with insight and intent. She manages to convey that I'm-a-grown-up-seriously feeling of a twenty-one year old that is both earnest and foolhardy really well. It's a book that's filled with good writing about sex and lust, not something you see every day.
And then there's its rather strange final third which I yearned for (what happened to Regina??) but also dreaded (must we know what happened to Regina??). It managed to be both fulfilling and bewildering and I'm still not sure I'm in love with that ending, but overall it's a strong and big book.
Luckily it is by Susan Choi and I know she's fantastic and sure enough this is not your everyday novel about a student/prof affair. It's not really about that at all, even if that initially appears to be the direction it's headed.
Choi's prose here looks stronger than I've ever seen it. Every sentence is filled with insight and intent. She manages to convey that I'm-a-grown-up-seriously feeling of a twenty-one year old that is both earnest and foolhardy really well. It's a book that's filled with good writing about sex and lust, not something you see every day.
And then there's its rather strange final third which I yearned for (what happened to Regina??) but also dreaded (must we know what happened to Regina??). It managed to be both fulfilling and bewildering and I'm still not sure I'm in love with that ending, but overall it's a strong and big book.
December 10, 2019
Ah, man. This is a brilliant novel. It upends narrative structure and form right up front, and then catches you off guard by doing it again toward the end.
It’s about a college student, Regina, and the womanizing male professor whose class she takes. But what you think is going to happen doesn’t entirely happen, which is to say there’s an affair but it’s not between Regina and her professor. This is the first twist.
Much of the novel is an excruciatingly self-conscious recollection of this affair, which shaped Regina at a formative part in her life. It’s that feeling we all have when we’re young that we’re the protagonist of life and everyone else is a supporting character and we don’t realize until we’re older that in fact everyone is their own protagonist.
And therein lies the second twist: Regina coming to terms with this and the way that she reconciles it. The final pages gave me a lump in my throat, they hurt so good.
This is a challenging novel. It’s dense and cerebral and its reward demands to be earned. I won’t soon forget it.
It’s about a college student, Regina, and the womanizing male professor whose class she takes. But what you think is going to happen doesn’t entirely happen, which is to say there’s an affair but it’s not between Regina and her professor. This is the first twist.
Much of the novel is an excruciatingly self-conscious recollection of this affair, which shaped Regina at a formative part in her life. It’s that feeling we all have when we’re young that we’re the protagonist of life and everyone else is a supporting character and we don’t realize until we’re older that in fact everyone is their own protagonist.
And therein lies the second twist: Regina coming to terms with this and the way that she reconciles it. The final pages gave me a lump in my throat, they hurt so good.
This is a challenging novel. It’s dense and cerebral and its reward demands to be earned. I won’t soon forget it.
March 2, 2024
Ms. Choi's novel at the first glance, seemingly is a predictable tale of the old trope of a possible student and professor sexual relationship and coming of age. Regina is 21, and is completely entranced by her mysterious hipster-like Professor, Nicholas Brodeur.
However, the twist is that Regina finds herself caught up in an affair with Nicholas' manic wife, Martha; and eventually, their mutual friend Daniel Dutra.
It's an exploration of a mercurial affair between two women, comically paced and at times downright loony; but of how a life of academia is far from erotic, perfect, and even demoralizing for everyone involved. I enjoyed this novel very much.
However, the twist is that Regina finds herself caught up in an affair with Nicholas' manic wife, Martha; and eventually, their mutual friend Daniel Dutra.
It's an exploration of a mercurial affair between two women, comically paced and at times downright loony; but of how a life of academia is far from erotic, perfect, and even demoralizing for everyone involved. I enjoyed this novel very much.
July 22, 2021
Nada mal para un libro que de dejé de lado y creí que no teminaría. Está muy bien escrito,pero se me hizo en ocasiones un poco cansón. Tuvo algunos momentos muy buenos y finalmente conecté con los personajes ,de ahí que le haya dado una puntuación superior a las 3 estrellas que creí que lo daría.
April 2, 2014
This book was terrific, and terrifically sexy.
July 4, 2014
First of all, the description on goodreads sucks. Just ignore.
I’ve been on a bit of a bisexual book binge lately, so after the Lambda Literary awards were announced and Susan Choi’s third novel My Education was declared the winner in the category of bisexual fiction, I thought I should pick it up. I have a healthy amount of skepticism about the decision making at the lammies but I decided this book was probably a good place to start. I’m glad, actually, that I didn’t have high expectations because this book ended up blowing me away. I loved it. I really loved it.
First of all, I loved the writing. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I found the juicy, exquisite wordiness just so fun. It was like reading a Victorian novel, but about a biracial, bisexual American woman in the 90s and 2000s. I totally see how other people find Choi’s style pretentious and excessive, but to me it was self-consciously so, if that makes any sense. Her sentences are so interesting and versatile. I particularly enjoyed the discrepancy between the more formal grammar (Choi never ends a sentence with a preposition, but always uses “to/for/in which”, for example) and the emotionally immature and sexy material. Choi pays really close attention to what her characters are doing and saying and a lot of the descriptions of both mundane and profound events are strikingly beautiful. Like here:
“My youth was the most stubborn, peremptory part of myself. In my most relaxed moments, it governed my being. It pricked up its ears at the banter of eighteen-year-olds on the street. It frankly examined their bodies. It did not know its place: that my youth governed me with such ease didn’t mean I was young. It meant I was divided as if housing a stowaway soul, rife with itches and yens which demanded a stern vigilance. I didn’t live thoughtlessly in my flesh anymore. My body had not, in its flesh, fundamentally changed quite so much as it now could intuit the change that would only be dodged by an untimely death, and to know both those bodies at once, the youthful, and the old, was to me the quintessence of being middle-aged. Now I saw all my selves, even those that did not yet exist, and the task was remembering which I presented to others.”
See the rest of my review at the lesbrary: http://lesbrary.com/2014/07/04/casey-...
I’ve been on a bit of a bisexual book binge lately, so after the Lambda Literary awards were announced and Susan Choi’s third novel My Education was declared the winner in the category of bisexual fiction, I thought I should pick it up. I have a healthy amount of skepticism about the decision making at the lammies but I decided this book was probably a good place to start. I’m glad, actually, that I didn’t have high expectations because this book ended up blowing me away. I loved it. I really loved it.
First of all, I loved the writing. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I found the juicy, exquisite wordiness just so fun. It was like reading a Victorian novel, but about a biracial, bisexual American woman in the 90s and 2000s. I totally see how other people find Choi’s style pretentious and excessive, but to me it was self-consciously so, if that makes any sense. Her sentences are so interesting and versatile. I particularly enjoyed the discrepancy between the more formal grammar (Choi never ends a sentence with a preposition, but always uses “to/for/in which”, for example) and the emotionally immature and sexy material. Choi pays really close attention to what her characters are doing and saying and a lot of the descriptions of both mundane and profound events are strikingly beautiful. Like here:
“My youth was the most stubborn, peremptory part of myself. In my most relaxed moments, it governed my being. It pricked up its ears at the banter of eighteen-year-olds on the street. It frankly examined their bodies. It did not know its place: that my youth governed me with such ease didn’t mean I was young. It meant I was divided as if housing a stowaway soul, rife with itches and yens which demanded a stern vigilance. I didn’t live thoughtlessly in my flesh anymore. My body had not, in its flesh, fundamentally changed quite so much as it now could intuit the change that would only be dodged by an untimely death, and to know both those bodies at once, the youthful, and the old, was to me the quintessence of being middle-aged. Now I saw all my selves, even those that did not yet exist, and the task was remembering which I presented to others.”
See the rest of my review at the lesbrary: http://lesbrary.com/2014/07/04/casey-...
September 14, 2013
So far, this novel is spectacularly bad. Overwritten, barely sensical in its flow, frivolous. Perhaps it's the Ithaca setting that keeps me reading? I'm not sure.
February 11, 2022
i love books where nothing happens, but this was just not it. i was bored out of my mind and didn’t care about anyone or anything. close to the end i got a little bit interested in her friend’s story, but it was honestly too late. it’s really bad.
November 12, 2013
Just when it seems that there’s no room in the class for another novel about college life, a new hand goes up. I won’t run through the whole roster because you already know the upperclassmen — from Richard Russo’s “Straight Man” to Jane Smiley’s “Moo.” Only two years ago, Jeffrey Eugenides brought the form to new heights with “The Marriage Plot,” a brilliant novel about an English major infected by the plots of 19th-century classics. Kingsley Amis’s “Lucky Jim,” of course, still lords it over them all.
So it takes some nerve to stride into this tweedy group and perform under the anxiety of their influence. What new footnote could be added to David Lodge’s satires of postmodern theory? How many class titles like “Fetishes and Freaks: Strategies of Queering the Gothic” can we giggle over? Who could possibly trace another erotic tension or envious impulse through the groves of academe?
Answer: Susan Choi. She’s never sounded smarter or wittier than she does in her fourth novel, “My Education.” Once again, we’re on a college campus with pompous professors. Once again, we meet an English major donning the mantle of adulthood, thirsty for “new esoterica.” But by the force of her stylistic virtuosity and psychological precision, Choi gives this worn setup all the nubile energy of a new school year.
The narrator is a 21-year-old student named Regina Gottlieb. “Graduate school was my Eden,” she tells us in a hilarious parody of self-righteous feminism and political correctness. Widely unread, she’s nevertheless mastered a pose of “enchanted absorption” that professors drink up. Totally out of her depth, “at that age I still believed in the malleability of personality, and could imagine myself more competent in fields about which I knew nothing.” Choi’s great triumph here is her ability to create a voice that enacts Regina’s cluelessness while simultaneously critiquing her. She’s the embodiment of that uniquely modern educational disaster: the brilliant student who knows nothing.
But of course she knows what she wants, and what she wants is Professor Nicholas Brodeur, at “almost forty” the English department’s star scholar and infamous sexual harasser. “He was the best-looking man I had seen in the flesh to that point in my life,” Regina says, and that he’s also the subject of petitions, complaints and protests makes him all the more irresistible. “He was said to recite bawdy couplets referring to breasts while directing his gaze in the classroom at actual breasts,” she whispers with aroused opprobrium.
She wiggles herself into his seminar and then into his office, where everything that went wrong in David Mamet’s “Oleanna” goes charmingly right. Soon, she’s working as his TA (no pun intended) and attending a boozy end-of-term party at his house. But at the moment of a consummation devoutly to be wished, Regina makes a play for the professor’s wife, and the novel takes a strange detour.
“Like any inexperienced fool, I believed that one need only follow the heart,” Regina says, in an acknowledgment of the havoc she sparks. There’s something dangerous about her insatiable affection, her unshakable belief that any barrier must fall before the force of her love. Although Regina is recalling this experience from many years later, these events come to us in all their sticky immediacy. “We could not stop avidly stroking each other,” she says, “as if we were a pair of Helen Kellers who had just linked the name with the flesh.” Admittedly, I don’t get out much, but the lesbian sex scenes of “My Education” should push it toward the erotic end of the bookshelf. Choi tries — and largely succeeds — to convey the overwhelming sensation of Regina’s first experience with “lovemaking’s arduous toil.” Sometimes, that’s thrilling. Sometimes, it involves effusing lines that might catch the attention of the judges for the Bad Sex Award, e.g. “Often my flesh went so dry we would squeak like a rubber shoe-sole on linoleum tile.”
The bulk of the novel sails across the stormy waters of Regina’s relationship with her professor’s wife. The impossible highs of youthful passion, the inevitable despair of asymmetrical devotion, and especially the withering bickering between two lovers of such wildly different levels of maturity — it’s all here in engorged Technicolor. What makes this so delicious, though, is Choi’s relentless style, the unflagging force of her scrutiny. She spins Regina’s voice into a breathless parody of Jamesean analysis — portrait of a lady as a young sex toy. Honestly, few other writers alive today make their sentences work so hard. Try skimming these paragraphs too fast and you’ll cut yourself on the sharpened edges of her prose.
But then, alas. . . .
Although endings are the literary appendages that book critics must handle with special care, I’ve got to say that I found the 80-page coda of “My Education” distractingly poor. Set in 2007, when Regina is a best-selling chick-lit author, this conclusion wastes the focused energy that the body of the novel generates. It thrusts a side character awkwardly into the center of the plot and introduces new characters whom we can’t care about. Worse, this novella-length section revolves around a series of quickly developed, even zany events that lack the necessary combination of wit and plausibility.
Choi obviously wants this latter section to be a reflection on Regina’s educational affair — and it does offer some wisdom about the differences between billowy passion and mature love. But its retrospection seems scattered and depth-resistant. It’s worth noting that Gail Godwin’s recent novel “Flora” handles the task of reappraising a youthful passion with just a few powerful concluding pages. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover, but sometimes relationships — and novels — drag on too long for their own good.
So it takes some nerve to stride into this tweedy group and perform under the anxiety of their influence. What new footnote could be added to David Lodge’s satires of postmodern theory? How many class titles like “Fetishes and Freaks: Strategies of Queering the Gothic” can we giggle over? Who could possibly trace another erotic tension or envious impulse through the groves of academe?
Answer: Susan Choi. She’s never sounded smarter or wittier than she does in her fourth novel, “My Education.” Once again, we’re on a college campus with pompous professors. Once again, we meet an English major donning the mantle of adulthood, thirsty for “new esoterica.” But by the force of her stylistic virtuosity and psychological precision, Choi gives this worn setup all the nubile energy of a new school year.
The narrator is a 21-year-old student named Regina Gottlieb. “Graduate school was my Eden,” she tells us in a hilarious parody of self-righteous feminism and political correctness. Widely unread, she’s nevertheless mastered a pose of “enchanted absorption” that professors drink up. Totally out of her depth, “at that age I still believed in the malleability of personality, and could imagine myself more competent in fields about which I knew nothing.” Choi’s great triumph here is her ability to create a voice that enacts Regina’s cluelessness while simultaneously critiquing her. She’s the embodiment of that uniquely modern educational disaster: the brilliant student who knows nothing.
But of course she knows what she wants, and what she wants is Professor Nicholas Brodeur, at “almost forty” the English department’s star scholar and infamous sexual harasser. “He was the best-looking man I had seen in the flesh to that point in my life,” Regina says, and that he’s also the subject of petitions, complaints and protests makes him all the more irresistible. “He was said to recite bawdy couplets referring to breasts while directing his gaze in the classroom at actual breasts,” she whispers with aroused opprobrium.
She wiggles herself into his seminar and then into his office, where everything that went wrong in David Mamet’s “Oleanna” goes charmingly right. Soon, she’s working as his TA (no pun intended) and attending a boozy end-of-term party at his house. But at the moment of a consummation devoutly to be wished, Regina makes a play for the professor’s wife, and the novel takes a strange detour.
“Like any inexperienced fool, I believed that one need only follow the heart,” Regina says, in an acknowledgment of the havoc she sparks. There’s something dangerous about her insatiable affection, her unshakable belief that any barrier must fall before the force of her love. Although Regina is recalling this experience from many years later, these events come to us in all their sticky immediacy. “We could not stop avidly stroking each other,” she says, “as if we were a pair of Helen Kellers who had just linked the name with the flesh.” Admittedly, I don’t get out much, but the lesbian sex scenes of “My Education” should push it toward the erotic end of the bookshelf. Choi tries — and largely succeeds — to convey the overwhelming sensation of Regina’s first experience with “lovemaking’s arduous toil.” Sometimes, that’s thrilling. Sometimes, it involves effusing lines that might catch the attention of the judges for the Bad Sex Award, e.g. “Often my flesh went so dry we would squeak like a rubber shoe-sole on linoleum tile.”
The bulk of the novel sails across the stormy waters of Regina’s relationship with her professor’s wife. The impossible highs of youthful passion, the inevitable despair of asymmetrical devotion, and especially the withering bickering between two lovers of such wildly different levels of maturity — it’s all here in engorged Technicolor. What makes this so delicious, though, is Choi’s relentless style, the unflagging force of her scrutiny. She spins Regina’s voice into a breathless parody of Jamesean analysis — portrait of a lady as a young sex toy. Honestly, few other writers alive today make their sentences work so hard. Try skimming these paragraphs too fast and you’ll cut yourself on the sharpened edges of her prose.
But then, alas. . . .
Although endings are the literary appendages that book critics must handle with special care, I’ve got to say that I found the 80-page coda of “My Education” distractingly poor. Set in 2007, when Regina is a best-selling chick-lit author, this conclusion wastes the focused energy that the body of the novel generates. It thrusts a side character awkwardly into the center of the plot and introduces new characters whom we can’t care about. Worse, this novella-length section revolves around a series of quickly developed, even zany events that lack the necessary combination of wit and plausibility.
Choi obviously wants this latter section to be a reflection on Regina’s educational affair — and it does offer some wisdom about the differences between billowy passion and mature love. But its retrospection seems scattered and depth-resistant. It’s worth noting that Gail Godwin’s recent novel “Flora” handles the task of reappraising a youthful passion with just a few powerful concluding pages. There must be 50 ways to leave your lover, but sometimes relationships — and novels — drag on too long for their own good.
July 23, 2024
The writing is absolutely luscious, even if the main characters are insufferable in their self-absorbed romantic obsession with each other. I suppose the book’s premise falls squarely in the tradition of Cathy and Heathclif. The second half was fascinating as we witnessed the narrator Regina grow into more of a reflective, mature human, forever altered by the relationships of her youth. Wow, Martha is toxic. And wow, Choi can write.
October 22, 2025
Something about Choi’s books is that there’s always that one particular “aha” moment that makes me suddenly realize I’m deeply invested.
A campus story. A bisexual love story. A May/December situation. A fine line between lust, love, and dependency. The brutal woes of friends and lovers.
Not gonna lie, this book is filled with insufferable characters, yet I kept begging for more. Give me on more serving. And damn, can these characters argue —it feels like every other page they’re tearing at each other’s throats. But those tempestuous arguments can provide some really funny lines, like this one:
"Martha, you were gone when I woke up! What was I supposed to do, shiver like a kitten in your room until you brought a bowl of milk—"
I legit laughed out loud at this incredulous yet brilliant zinger.
Ah, Regina, Martha, Dutra, Nicholas. Don’t wanna be ya. Or maybe I was once you. Or maybe I knew you. Or maybe I am still you.
What a riveting, exasperating tortured hot mess relationship drama that nailed the landing.
(I may need to expand on this review—we’ll see)
A campus story. A bisexual love story. A May/December situation. A fine line between lust, love, and dependency. The brutal woes of friends and lovers.
Not gonna lie, this book is filled with insufferable characters, yet I kept begging for more. Give me on more serving. And damn, can these characters argue —it feels like every other page they’re tearing at each other’s throats. But those tempestuous arguments can provide some really funny lines, like this one:
"Martha, you were gone when I woke up! What was I supposed to do, shiver like a kitten in your room until you brought a bowl of milk—"
I legit laughed out loud at this incredulous yet brilliant zinger.
Ah, Regina, Martha, Dutra, Nicholas. Don’t wanna be ya. Or maybe I was once you. Or maybe I knew you. Or maybe I am still you.
What a riveting, exasperating tortured hot mess relationship drama that nailed the landing.
(I may need to expand on this review—we’ll see)
July 21, 2013
This was a tiresome read for me. I appreciate Choi's ability to craft a complex and meaningful sentence, but I grew weary of the long, winding prose. I found some of the dialogue so unauthentic and pretentious that it made me laugh. The sex scenes were cringe worthy. Most tiresome were the selfish, self-absorbed, whiney characters. I noticed other reviewers remarked on the growth Regina demonstrated in the final third of the novel. It seems the opposite to me. Regina's last few interactions reveal little growth; they instead reveal how little she regards the ones she left at home.
Another reviewer labeled this book excessive and I agree. I would also add pretentious to that label.
Another reviewer labeled this book excessive and I agree. I would also add pretentious to that label.
July 26, 2018
This is my very first book that I have read of Susan Choi. I enjoyed this story very much .What I liked about it was how Susan has used beautiful prose's of words in every sentence. I thought that all the characters were extremely well developed. This is a wonderful story full of sexual obsession and very passionate. I loved the surprising climactic twist. I would recommend this book to readers.
May 16, 2022
there’s so many things I don’t like about this book. First, the author explains every single thing in so much detail to the point it gets boring like you don’t need to describe a white t shirt 10 different ways. The main character was so annoying actually all of the characters were and none of them felt bad for their actions at all. The end was so unnecessary and just dragged.
November 17, 2019
***Spoilers included***
Reading this book was like trying to date someone you didn’t find attractive, but liked their personality. Sure, you can give it a go because you have time on your hands, but when you get really “into” it-having to give physical affection like spending hours holding it to pass the time, it becomes super tedious and unpalatable. Just because something has artful elements doesn’t mean you should commit to it. My “friends” (i.e.-random Goodreads reviewers I had selected to read posts of before starting) tried to warn me, but I thought, “I’m an English professor, so if the writing is that good, I must like the plot, right?” Nah.
Plot: Regina is a grad student (in English) and fantasizes about a professor in the department (who ends up giving her a TA job) until she meets his wife who just had a baby. They’re apparently wilding attracted to each other and hook up a lot until Martha decides to leave Nicholas and have a half-year affair with Regina. Regina falls obsessively in love to the point where she drinks Martha’s breast milk (you were warned…), drops out of school, and tries to tie Martha down with commitment, while Martha urges her to live in the moment and spends an equal amount of time playing pool with Regina’s friend, Dutra. In the end, Martha flips out at the thought of being openly out with Regina at a public event, sleeps with Dutra, and Regina mopes around/sleeps with Nicholas until she finds her way to New York and becomes a famous author (because, you know, that’s really likely). The book drags on for another almost hundred pages about Regina reading a book to her son (yep-there’s an entire page for that), giving uninteresting snippets of her life, and explaining Dutra’s love life even though he was barely mentioned through the majority of the plot. Then, Regina hears that Dutra always loved Martha, so after cheating on her husband (while pregnant) with Martha herself, she arranges for Martha, now single and aged, to reconnect with Dutra and fades into the background.
Why did I even try this book? Well, it was on some internet list and I was interested in the gender mixing from the typical ��young student has a torrid affair in her twenties” trope. Plus, someone has apparently stated that every sentence of Choi’s should be stitched and framed (its somewhere on Goodreads. Keep scrolling if you care). Many of these sentences definitely should not be stitched due to vulgarity or just weirdness, but the racy parts end about 80 pages in. In fact, it’s interesting that a book so centered around an affair for climax (pun intended) so early in the plot!
I did like a few of the passages though: “Childishly I’d envisioned the act of bestowal: like sliding a ring on her finger I’d lay the key onto her palm. And as fairy-tale keys tend to do, it would open far more than a mere wooden door. But it now seemed superfluous” (157). And “The place you go back to gets changed by your very returning” (260).
Other issues I had with the book:
• The characterization was off. I had a hard time imagining any of them. Regina could apparently go from “sexy catwoman” to masculine easily, which is fine, but between that and her depersonalized style of narration, I was left unable to not only picture her, but also care what became of her.
• Building off the first thought, it would have been far more interesting to read from multiple perspectives. Martha made valid points of Regina’s delusions and clinginess, and we were supposed to see Dutra as significant in the end, but I couldn’t because there was just so.much.Regina. Perhaps the entire book is really showcasing that people should listen to their elders since Martha was right about everything! “Your ‘I love you’ is like gimme gimme” (95). You can’t make someone feel in the same way you do due to perseverance.
• This book is oddly dated. I don’t care what setting it’s in-there was no reason to call someone “retarded” (22).
• This culture of all the professors drinking and hooking up with grad students was horrifying! I’m sure it’s been true of some places in the past, but imagining professors dressing like students and going out drinking with them is pathetic.
• I didn’t end up liking Choi’s writing that much. It was really hard to focus on and rambling, as if Regina’s entire life was in a fever dream. There were super rambling areas where one astute Goodreads reviewer stated that it seemed Choi was just trying to get to 300 pages for publication, which I agree with.
• The plot was so repetitive with Martha evading Regina, Regina saying “I love you,” then it repeating for 200 pages. I get that it accurately conveys a relationship in a rut with no hope of moving forward, and I honestly saw how like it was one of my own previous ones for that reason, but as a third party, it was hard to keep going. I really didn’t care what became of them.
• I read one Goodreads review that stated how refreshing it was that gender wasn’t the focus of the book, but it seemed like it was. Though Regina said it didn’t matter that Martha was a woman, the fact that they were two women acting for or in spite of each other’s emotions seemed to play a significant role. It also doesn’t seem unintentional that they both end up with men in the end with no mention of other female trysts.
• I don’t care that Choi was trying to show that Martha was right and Regina’s love couldn’t last; I still don’t believe she’d forget the name of Martha’s baby that she had to help take care of!
This book just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t racy enough to be some kind of exciting affair and it wasn’t plot-driven enough to be anything more than another “girl learns about the world by getting her heart broken by someone older.”
Reading this book was like trying to date someone you didn’t find attractive, but liked their personality. Sure, you can give it a go because you have time on your hands, but when you get really “into” it-having to give physical affection like spending hours holding it to pass the time, it becomes super tedious and unpalatable. Just because something has artful elements doesn’t mean you should commit to it. My “friends” (i.e.-random Goodreads reviewers I had selected to read posts of before starting) tried to warn me, but I thought, “I’m an English professor, so if the writing is that good, I must like the plot, right?” Nah.
Plot: Regina is a grad student (in English) and fantasizes about a professor in the department (who ends up giving her a TA job) until she meets his wife who just had a baby. They’re apparently wilding attracted to each other and hook up a lot until Martha decides to leave Nicholas and have a half-year affair with Regina. Regina falls obsessively in love to the point where she drinks Martha’s breast milk (you were warned…), drops out of school, and tries to tie Martha down with commitment, while Martha urges her to live in the moment and spends an equal amount of time playing pool with Regina’s friend, Dutra. In the end, Martha flips out at the thought of being openly out with Regina at a public event, sleeps with Dutra, and Regina mopes around/sleeps with Nicholas until she finds her way to New York and becomes a famous author (because, you know, that’s really likely). The book drags on for another almost hundred pages about Regina reading a book to her son (yep-there’s an entire page for that), giving uninteresting snippets of her life, and explaining Dutra’s love life even though he was barely mentioned through the majority of the plot. Then, Regina hears that Dutra always loved Martha, so after cheating on her husband (while pregnant) with Martha herself, she arranges for Martha, now single and aged, to reconnect with Dutra and fades into the background.
Why did I even try this book? Well, it was on some internet list and I was interested in the gender mixing from the typical ��young student has a torrid affair in her twenties” trope. Plus, someone has apparently stated that every sentence of Choi’s should be stitched and framed (its somewhere on Goodreads. Keep scrolling if you care). Many of these sentences definitely should not be stitched due to vulgarity or just weirdness, but the racy parts end about 80 pages in. In fact, it’s interesting that a book so centered around an affair for climax (pun intended) so early in the plot!
I did like a few of the passages though: “Childishly I’d envisioned the act of bestowal: like sliding a ring on her finger I’d lay the key onto her palm. And as fairy-tale keys tend to do, it would open far more than a mere wooden door. But it now seemed superfluous” (157). And “The place you go back to gets changed by your very returning” (260).
Other issues I had with the book:
• The characterization was off. I had a hard time imagining any of them. Regina could apparently go from “sexy catwoman” to masculine easily, which is fine, but between that and her depersonalized style of narration, I was left unable to not only picture her, but also care what became of her.
• Building off the first thought, it would have been far more interesting to read from multiple perspectives. Martha made valid points of Regina’s delusions and clinginess, and we were supposed to see Dutra as significant in the end, but I couldn’t because there was just so.much.Regina. Perhaps the entire book is really showcasing that people should listen to their elders since Martha was right about everything! “Your ‘I love you’ is like gimme gimme” (95). You can’t make someone feel in the same way you do due to perseverance.
• This book is oddly dated. I don’t care what setting it’s in-there was no reason to call someone “retarded” (22).
• This culture of all the professors drinking and hooking up with grad students was horrifying! I’m sure it’s been true of some places in the past, but imagining professors dressing like students and going out drinking with them is pathetic.
• I didn’t end up liking Choi’s writing that much. It was really hard to focus on and rambling, as if Regina’s entire life was in a fever dream. There were super rambling areas where one astute Goodreads reviewer stated that it seemed Choi was just trying to get to 300 pages for publication, which I agree with.
• The plot was so repetitive with Martha evading Regina, Regina saying “I love you,” then it repeating for 200 pages. I get that it accurately conveys a relationship in a rut with no hope of moving forward, and I honestly saw how like it was one of my own previous ones for that reason, but as a third party, it was hard to keep going. I really didn’t care what became of them.
• I read one Goodreads review that stated how refreshing it was that gender wasn’t the focus of the book, but it seemed like it was. Though Regina said it didn’t matter that Martha was a woman, the fact that they were two women acting for or in spite of each other’s emotions seemed to play a significant role. It also doesn’t seem unintentional that they both end up with men in the end with no mention of other female trysts.
• I don’t care that Choi was trying to show that Martha was right and Regina’s love couldn’t last; I still don’t believe she’d forget the name of Martha’s baby that she had to help take care of!
This book just wasn’t enough. It wasn’t racy enough to be some kind of exciting affair and it wasn’t plot-driven enough to be anything more than another “girl learns about the world by getting her heart broken by someone older.”
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