Benefit

by Siobhan Phillips

A young woman discovers what lurks beneath the system that anointed her among the best and brightest of her generation. Laura, a student from a modest background, escapes her small town to join the ranks of the academic elite on a Weatherfield fellowship to study at Oxford University. She enthusiastically throws herself into her coursework, yet she is never able to escape a feeling of unease and dislocation among her fellow chosen "students of promise and ambition." Years later, back in the United States with a PhD and dissertation on Henry James, she loses her job as an adjunct professor and reconnects with the Weatherfield Foundation. Commissioned to write a history for its centennial, she becomes obsessed by the Gilded Age origins of the Weatherfield fortune, rooted in the exploitation and misery of sugar production. As she is lured back into abandoned friendships within the glimmering group, she discovers hidden aspects of herself and others that point the way to a terrifying freedom. Benefit  is a vivid story of personal awakening that offers a withering critique of toxic philanthropy and the American meritocracy.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

1 pages, Audio CD

First published April 19, 2022

Reviews

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laura had work. She worked late into the night at her research. What she couldn’t produce were results, a publishable paper with insight and a cogent argument. Work had saved her, but it also divided her from others.

She had won a coveted Weatherfield fellowship to Oxford. While the other Weatherfield fellows met up for fun, Laura worked. She yearned to be a part of them when they were students, and she envies their success as adults, especially since she has lost her temporary part time teaching job and is stalled on her essay on Henry James. She feels “trapped in something I don’t want to be part of, and that something has also rejected me, and also I can’t escape it.”

The beautiful and successful Weatherfield fellow Heather has kept up a patronizing relationship with Laura over the years since Oxford. Laura’s role in the friendship was to reflect back what Heather seemed to want. Now, Heather offers Laura work writing a history of the fellowship for the Weatherfield centennial benefit.

Laura needs the money. She delves into researching, learning about the source of the Weatherfield money in sugar manufacturing, the appalling history of sugar plantations, the brutality of slave labor, and the impact of sugar cane farming on the environment. When details about the family elude her, she imagines the life of the Weatherfield widow who had set up the fellowship.

The project brings her back in touch with the other fellows. What she learns upends what she thought she knew about their time at Oxford. Laura’s fantasy about the Weatherfield widow is no closer to reality than her imaginings of the private lives of the fellows at Oxford, or her understanding of their current lives.
Laura comes to a reckoning. She realizes that what she thought she wanted was not worth having and not what she wants. Finding her voice has been late coming, but we believe that Laura is now on a path to a healthier life.

The novel is rich in revelations about wealth and success and the academic life.

I received an ARC from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an extraordinary novel, intertwining so many ideas, characters, styles… I cannot believe nobody wrote about this and Trust last year when this too is interrogating the origins and work of money, its poisonousness and necessity. (Even the title has a similarly double meaning.) How it is inextricably connected to American power and empire. Deeply infused with James and his concerns about the same (less empire, more money, sex, beauty). A rare good Oxford book written by an American, though it’s not really about Oxford. Stunning prose and dialogue. Just a joy and pleasure to read.

Criminally underlooked and deserving of a much bigger audience.

[Hannah Penn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good writing, awful story line

[Dave Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thoughtful and intimate yet sidelong. A story about an awkward person that's somehow not awkwardly told? It's not straightforwardly told, but amid the haltingness, the shift of style, the postmodern touches, what comes across most is the feeling of being tenuous and adrift and the struggle to recover a sense of self, and you feel it differently across the different episodes where Laura reconnects with her former classmates. Thought it's pinned to an earlier era (post-9/11 aughts through the post-crash 2010's), I can imagine this showing how restoring friendships and other connections is going to be in a post-COVID era. Like, everything's changed, your life has changed, what more is there to want or strive for? With the way that this story is grounded in Henry James and literary modernism (and the academic study of literature too, in a way), you get the sense that this is a different flavor of the same struggle. Also, I can see how the source material of Laura's research intrudes on her life and her narrative, and the complications of war, money, capitalism, etc. are timeless in a sense but I found the connective tissue between Florence and Laura a bit hard to grasp. I picked this one up due to an endorsement from the author's husband (whose writing I love), and as a former Central PA college student who majored in English with a soft spot for that combination of locale and pursuit, I'm glad I did.

[thewanderingjew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benefit, Siobhan Phillips, author
This book is a masterpiece in its own way. Some of the sentences seem obscure, requiring me to reread and rethink the meaning of many of them; they open up a whole world of questions about the world and how it is perceived by others, of how we define everything in relation to how others define the same things. As the main character, Laura, a questionable scholar of English, prepares an essay for a coming benefit for The Weatherfield Foundation, a non-profit that grants scholarships to qualified students, of which she was once a recipient, a decade ago, she reveals a world and a human race full of contradictions. As she explores the background of the foundation, she discovers that there are tremendous contradictions in their own limited recorded history and even the meaning of benefit is not as simple as one might think. There is more than one way to define the word.
The Foundation grew out of the sugar industry, a commercial enterprise that damaged the environment, abused its employees, engaged in racism, and provided no nutritional value whatsoever. Can something innately bad, actually do good? Does the harm it caused the environment or they body justify the pleasure it provided? Are vegetarians or vegans more intelligent and successful, even more moral? Are the scholarships they provide better for those who are qualified intellectually or those qualified according to their diversity and their disadvantages? Is character more valuable than skill? Is experience more important than book learning? What group of people benefits the most from the Foundation?
If the successful person is thin and beautiful and Laura is not, is that the reason for Laura’s lack of success? Or, is her lack of success due to the fact that she does not see herself as beautiful and successful, and thus neither does the world? Some people are intense, others are superficial, and they, though less genuine and sincere, often appear to be ahead of the game. Those that know how to make themselves appear friendly, compassionate and intelligent, without possessing those endearing, and hopefully, enduring qualities, sometimes find it easier to make friends. Are we so shallow that we only care about appearances and not results, implied values rather than real ones?
If we fight a war to provide freedom for other oppressed classes of people, is it justified if we then enslave our own people, forcing them to be soldiers, forcing them to fight the wars we chose and they did not? Should rules be obeyed, contracts be honored, plans be respected, in other words, are we responsible or irresponsible depending on how we approach those subjects? Are activists pursuing an honorable venture or are they just pleasing their own needs? Is it good or bad? Do those who engage in activist pursuits have legitimate concerns for others or are they satisfying their own needs to find their own sense of self and freedom? Are those that have suffered disadvantage and survived, more qualified than those with actual qualifications but who have not suffered?
Is consistency more valuable than inconsistency? Is being open to change better than being opposed to it and remaining stagnant? Do Republicans or Democrats have the right philosophy? Was Obama or Trump the better leader? Is Christianity more beneficial than Judaism? Is religion a valid concept? Can we prove the existence of G-d? If the person’s intent is worthwhile, does it matter if the person is not worthwhile? If the war is won, but the end result is death and more destruction, is it worth it? Does diversity or qualification make a good candidate for a position? Are those least reliable judged as the most reliable because of their gift of gab or empathy? Many questions arose, and while some of these questions were not asked outright, the reader will think of them as they are subtly inferred to by the author, because they will all remind us of the current issues we are facing today. Our environment, our climate, our economy, our safety, our government are all up for discussion. Is being open to change better than being opposed to it and remaining stagnant? At times, it was difficult to ponder the questions constantly raised, but they were so well crafted, I could not stop reading or thinking about them. There are multiple tangents, and myriad anecdotal descriptions constantly bombarding the reader, it almost felt like someone was trying to explain everything on their mind in one long run-on sentence. Yet it was a sentence the reader will feel they must read until it ends.
Laura questions everything, and does not accept anything at face value, but at the same time, she professes to have few values of her own as she investigates the values of others. She is insecure and yet is valued by others for her ability to make secure value judgments. Do they really know her? Does she know herself?
When the benefit is finally held, and many old Weatherfield scholars meet as they prepare and attend, are they successful or not? Are those that seem to be successful sincere or shallow? Do any of the people Laura knew a decade ago have core values that they keep or are they constantly changing even as they insist that they are the same? What is a friend? Are these Laura’s friends or what others would call acquaintances? Is she a good friend? Is she honest in her relationships? Are her failures her own fault or the fault of others?
The amount of imagination and creativity that the author had to engage in to write this book had to be monumental. Every conversation is a tangent of another, offering still another anecdote about some idea or about some person or event. The book is written in short staccato sentences that barely give the reader time to take a breath, and in this way, we discover that no one seems really interested in in-depth thought or investigation. There is no time. Everyone has places to go and people to meet, but do they really? Everyone talks around issues and never really gets to the point. Few questions are answered as each conversation almost becomes a monologue from the person questioned that does not answer the questions, but rather, asks their own or babbles about what they personally want to discuss, often making little sense and having little to do with the purpose of the intended conversation. In this fashion, the book goes on and questions every moment of our lives, presenting both sides of all issues, but never reaching a conclusion, other than the one that there is no conclusion, but this one, in the end, Laura feels free.

[Ajk · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a lot more thought-provoking than I expected. Not in the "the true story behind her scholarship", which is pretty clear from the beginning where that's going - though maybe less so for people less Well Actually about gilded-age riches than I. But in the way that it treats all of its characters, particularly the protagonist. These are not pleasant people! Everyone's a little cruel to each other, and mostly to themselves, and all of the jealousies and insipidness feels extremely lived in.
It's a very 2022 book in many ways: there's no unnecessary detail, every little bit drives the plot, and it is clearly intended for a certain audience that I'm not 100% sure I am. And that may be less the fault (fault?) of the author than the editor. The people feel very real, but the reader only gets these little shrapnel glimpses of them.
Which is to say, I liked the book. I wish it was about 3 times as long and that we could actually get a sense of who these people are, but that's maybe because I read it on a sprawling plane ride and had the time to sink into it. For something that makes the connection between the previous gilded age and this one, it would've been fun to have a more baroque, gilded age, sort of feel to it. Nevertheless, it was a really great read.

[Rob Forteath · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know that feeling you get when you're at an event that is petering out, and someone you know, obviously on their way out the door, says, "you're coming with us, right? to the thing?" You don't know what the thing might be, but maybe you go along -- if you know the person is someone whose choices are likely to work for you.

The first part of this book has that sort of feel. The author is vague about where the story is going, but makes you feel confident that it will be worth going along.

For most of the middle, as Laura stumbles along, and as she spends time with the successful people she knew at Oxford, the story is a very worthwhile journey. It's only near the end that the story becomes a bit too thin to support itself. Any sort of manufactured crisis or craziness would be much worse than a bit of dullness, so it's definitely for the best.

It's an interesting investigation into what other people's success is to you -- especially when you don't want their various types of success, but also don't feel you have succeeded at what you do want for yourself.

[Reading Fool · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an Advance Reader's Copy of this book.

What an interesting read. Laura is an academic whose field of study/expertise is Henry James. She was a Weatherfield Fellow and studied at Oxford University, becoming a member of an elite group. When she loses her adjunct professor position, she gets the opportunity to work on a writing project for the Weatherfield Foundation, to look back at its history for its centennial celebration. The story has two plots - about Laura's self-reflection on her career, life, friendships; about the history of the Weatherfield wealth from the sugar industry. I was intrigued by both story lines. The writing is intelligent and witty and I enjoyed every word.

[Caroline Shaffer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first chapter was really well written and interesting. I loved that it was set around a university and delved into studious characters. But the more I read, the less consistent structure the book had. Chapters became vague, unconnected, and unimportant. In the end, I felt unsatisfied and felt like the book really hadn’t gone anywhere. There wasn’t much character development or much of a plot. Even though some chapters were well written and the idea had potential, I did not enjoy reading this book.

[Grant Stoltzfus · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are lots of campus satires out there. This is the first book I've read that puts a new spin on the genre by writing a fellowship satire. Phillips does for the Rhodes/Gates/Mitchell crew what Randall Jarrell does for Sarah Lawrence in Pictures from an Institution or Zadie Smith does for Harvard in On Beauty. Highly recommended.

[Carolina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The descriptions in this novels were very well done, detailed, and giving a good sense of atmosphere and feelings. I had a hard time finding a unifying thread in the story, aside from some social commentary about people with money and those who don't have much, and some philosophical ideas and intellectual discussions thrown in as well about the various characters, college educated friends.

[Robyn]

Notables 2022 #32

[Michael Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/2...

[Halifax · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook

[Bridget Golden · Rating 2 out of 5]

The characters were well described and developed, but the plot went nowhere.

[Sophia Eck · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF, was like 70% through and i had no interest anymore. the first half was good, really good writing, though a weird composition. the story just didn’t go anywhere, the plot was so fragmented and random, and didn’t seem to have any structure.