Francine Prose

A Novel (P.S.)

Blue Angel

Jeff Brown 

I decided to read this book after reading "My Dark Vanessa". I was wanting to compare a modern book with a book from 20 years ago -- how it handled the teacher-student situation; how the burgeoning PC movement that was colliding with academia at that time, compared to the #metoo movement and cancel culture today. I pretty much reached the expected conclusion of my experiment. (I didn't mean to make my review so long)

However, they were vastly different books. "Vanessa" was a young teen pursued by a high school teacher; however, the current climate doesn't appear until Vanessa is an adult and the teacher is caught with another student. This was written in Vanessa's voice.

"Angel" was about an ageing writer (whose voice we are following), with a novel that he can't complete, who has been forced into being a professor with students that never show any promise. Until Angela arrived. She was the writer with promise he always has been looking for. While she's a tattooed, pierced punk, he doesn't fall in love with her as much as he becomes obsessed with her writing. Angela is the pursuer, luring him with her novel, a chapter at a time. She is willing to trade herself for the professor to show her novel to his publisher. The deed only lasted a couple of pages (and didn't come to completion), but the damage was done. 

Getting involved with a student never crossed the professor's mind. Prose presented the professor as a occasionally forgetful, task-focused man with the usual simple faults as any man. He has a wonderful wife, and they have the usual difficult relationship with their teenage girl at college. He hates that he has to teach, and hates the spoiled brats in his classes, but he is a man just working through life with a great wife, the few friends which is all he wants, and an unfinished novel. Until he makes one, brief bad decision.

The story isn't unique, but the author presents it very well. It ends as expected, with the academics holding a closed-door review and the professor slinks off into oblivion. It is a page-turner, but without a lot of meat -- just being in the mind of a bumbling professor. And the ending was rather bland and tame. So I think my rating is appropriate.

Blue Angel A Novel (P.S.)

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