An Academic Affair (McAlister)

[cahn]

thistleingrey mentioned that it was a solid depiction of academia and characters in academia, which immediately piqued my interest. I have read Ali Hazelwood's The Love Hypothesis and enjoyed it, and I know Hazelwood is in academia, but I sometimes thought... well, let's just say that it's a romance between a grad student and the young hotshot professor in her department, and... okay... that part... is totally realistic actually... but I feel like I kind of got stuck a lot in all my feelings about the potential deep pitfalls. Hypothesis was also, I think, much more concerned with primarily being a romance novel and secondarily a novel about academia.

Anyway, this is unabashedly a romance novel, complete with marriage-of-convenience and sometimes even the one-bed trope, but without any particular kinks like professor/student :P But the thing that makes it interesting (to me) is that it's at least as interested in both the experiences of the precariat (*) and also familial relationships as it is in the romance itself. In fact, it does not have a conventional romantic Act 3; here the Act 3, as well as the understandable but frustrating misunderstandings that prolong it, is passed squarely on to the familial relationships rather than the romantic ones. Which I personally really like!

The two main characters, Jonah and Sadie, are adorably academics. (**) I laughed out loud when Jonah said, "I'm all for radically revised gender roles in the heteronormative institution of marriage, but I should still pay for my wife's engagement ring," if only because I've never heard anyone else talk that way in a romance novel -- though if you have, please rec it to me. (Their engagement is the aforementioned engagement-of-convenience and the ring is $27.99, I hasten to append, and she pays for his ring.) (lol, I think I actually paid for my engagement ring, because it was an important transaction involving me and an important piece of jewelry -- what?)

Anyway, I rarely like romance novels, but I liked this one!

(*) I did not know the term precariat: the precarious proletariat, that insecure class of unstable work and low wages -- but I was familiar at least by reputation with the academic pre-tenure-track life that the term describes, in the sense that it is one of the many reasons why I did not pursue academia

(**) Jonah likes using footnotes; I guess your mileage may vary but I found it adorable, perhaps inevitably

Comments

[thistleingrey]

Yay, I'm glad you liked it!

I think the book holds together (and holds its fairly upbeat, light tone) because it leans into the idea that community runs things. The profs who have usable offices are resting heavily upon community members, colleagues they choose as much as possible not to see. Jonah and Sadie make different choices about that, within the tiny amounts of choice they have....