Overview
A sharply observed comic novel about a writer straining against the role of faculty wife
This first novel from the acclaimed memoirist Emily Fox Gordon is a tart, intelligent comedy of manners set on the campus of a large Southern university. It is also a story about the comforts and grievances of a marriage of longstanding—about change and continuity and the possibility of renewal in midlife.
Ben Blau is the reluctant chair of the philosophy department of The Lola Dees Institute, surrounded by a bestiary of academic innocents and opportunists. His wife Ruth—a writer whose early literary success never quite blossomed into a career—nurtures sometimes noisy and sometimes private rebellions against the conventions of academic life. Their lives have settled, if not always comfortably, into a dull ceremonial round of convocations, committee meetings, and pot-luck dinners. To Ruth it seems that nothing will ever change.
Except that this year a new couple has arrived on campus: an ethereal, celebrated young memoirist and her husband, an intellectual jack-of-all-trades and perpetual misfit. Something about these two throws the staid academic world of the Lola Dees Institute into comic chaos and revives Ruth's hopes that she might become once again the writer she used to be.
Emily Fox Gordon's astringent depiction of academic life and her mature, finely wrought observations about marriage and relationships make It Will Come to Me is a complete delight —engaging, wise, superbly written, and very, very funny.
Synopsis
A sharply observed comic novel about a writer straining against the role of faculty wife
This first novel from the acclaimed memoirist Emily Fox Gordon is a tart, intelligent comedy of manners set on the campus of a large Southern university. It is also a story about the comforts and grievances of a marriage of longstanding—about change and continuity and the possibility of renewal in midlife.
Ben Blau is the reluctant chair of the philosophy department of The Lola Dees Institute, surrounded by a bestiary of academic innocents and opportunists. His wife Ruth—a writer whose early literary success never quite blossomed into a career—nurtures sometimes noisy and sometimes private rebellions against the conventions of academic life. Their lives have settled, if not always comfortably, into a dull ceremonial round of convocations, committee meetings, and pot-luck dinners. To Ruth it seems that nothing will ever change.
Except that this year a new couple has arrived on campus: an ethereal, celebrated young memoirist and her husband, an intellectual jack-of-all-trades and perpetual misfit. Something about these two throws the staid academic world of the Lola Dees Institute into comic chaos and revives Ruth's hopes that she might become once again the writer she used to be.
Emily Fox Gordon's astringent depiction of academic life and her mature, finely wrought observations about marriage and relationships make It Will Come to Me is a complete delight —engaging, wise, superbly written, and very, very funny.
The Washington Post - Caroline Preston
…in her wry first novel…Emily Fox Gordon gives voice to a too-often-neglected character who lurks at the edges of any campus drama, unseen yet all-seeing: the faculty wife…Gordon's hilarious spin on the inanities of academic life, from the welcome-back potluck supper to the dean's Tapestry Task Force Mission Statement Working Group (TTFMSWG), reassures us that the next generation of the campus novel is alive and kicking.
Editorials
Caroline Preston
…in her wry first novel…Emily Fox Gordon gives voice to a too-often-neglected character who lurks at the edges of any campus drama, unseen yet all-seeing: the faculty wife…Gordon's hilarious spin on the inanities of academic life, from the welcome-back potluck supper to the dean's Tapestry Task Force Mission Statement Working Group (TTFMSWG), reassures us that the next generation of the campus novel is alive and kicking.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Memoirist Gordon ventures into fiction with this mixed academic comedy set at a Texas university. Ruth Blau, a once-promising novelist married to philosophy professor Ben, achieved some acclaim years ago, but she never got around to following it up. When celebrated memoirist Ricia Spottiswoode and her protective husband, Charles Johns, are added to the faculty, Ruth hopes this will give her a chance at the literary life she's dreamed of. In the meantime, Ben suffers when a flaky, fairy-obsessed woman replaces his longtime secretary. Ruth and Ben also try to juggle the demands of their mentally ill son, Isaac, whose only contact with them is through his therapist. The central characters, unfortunately, are too passive and spend most of their time observing each other and what happens around them, and though Gordon's prose is sharp-she particularly excels in scene-setting-the overall effect is one of disconnection: from character to character and writer to reader. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
Although a sharp and witty observer of the world around her, Ruth Blau is utterly discontented with her life as a faculty wife at a large Southern university. At the insistence of a therapist, Ruth and her philosophy professor husband, Ben, haven't spoken to their son Isaac in years. Isaac is mentally ill, living on the streets of their community, and his condition shows no progress. Once the promising author of a trilogy of well-received novels, Ruth is now struggling to find self-fulfillment, feeling that "the years go by in circles"; the only change is that [she sinks] into [herself] a little deeper." Her wait for something to happen finally ends when a new couple, a successful young memoirist and her jack-of-all-trades husband, arrive on campus. Readers may wince as they laugh through Ruth's struggles in this well-written debut novel by memoirist Gordon (Mockingbird Years: A Life in and Out of Therapy). An enjoyable read throughout, this is recommended for all fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/1/08.]
—Shaunna Hunter