Admission
by Jean Hanff Korelitz
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jean Hanff KorelitzEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-04-13
ISBN: 0446540706
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Book Reviews of Admission
Book Review: I don't know why some books get published.
Summary: 2 Stars
Maybe I've gotten spoiled on the crazy idea that novels should have a point, or at least be interesting, because Admissions scrapes by indifferently on both counts. It escapes me how a fiction novel passed by with so many unending, droning tangents about the literal admissions process and why the author (and editor and publisher) thought that anyone would care to read these meandering rants in repeated succession, but there you go. That's the book.
The protagonist is not particularly likable. She seems one of those dull women, in a dull unfullfilling relationship that you see from a distance and wonder why and how anyone would live like that. Well, that's one thing this novel did - explain how people can stand to lead stale, seemingly pointless lives where nothing ever happens, devoid of passions, devoid of excitement and meaning. Halfway through the book I realized literally two things had happened - she boned the guy from Quest and her long time partner got another woman pregnant and ran out on her. (The plot points tend to come out of nowhere, shortly after they are introduced, which is unsatisfying.) I'll repeat - Portia isn't a likable or sympathetic character, and there isn't really much need to empathize with her either. So what's the point? Portia's only passion in life is explaining - repeatedly, in unnecessary minute detail - that Ivy League schools take no joy in rejecting applicants and how guilty she is that people assume otherwise. Literally about 300 pages of the book are spent expounding that point.
I knew I wasn't going to end up anywhere meaningful when I felt no guilt at skipping pages in a novel I'd never read before. The second time Portia's mother Susannah and her ridiculous "tricking a teenager into keeping an unwanted baby" storyline popped up (embarrassingly an unabashed plot device to link back to Portia's own unwanted pregnancy) I didn't even pretend to care about this even less likable character or plotline. I skipped pages with aplomb! I knew I wasn't going to miss anything important or relevant. (How could I? The whole novel itself was seeming unimportant and irrelevant.)
I am going to spoil this book for you because a third of the way through you realize Portia has had an unwanted pregnancy, and the circumstances of that pregnancy are not explained until the point where in any other novel, you'd be at the falling action succeeding the climax. As it became increasingly clear where the novel was going, I lost interest in it and tried to find a spoiler online to avoid actually having to read it, but there wasn't one. So for those in a similar predicament - and for those who should know that this novel really isn't worth reading as it doesn't impart any wisdom, entertainment, or indeed lasting impression at all - I will spoil the ending now. SPOILER, SPOILER, SPOILER. This is the plot - minus about 40,000 words on why admission to Ivy League universities is SO GREAT and SO TERRIBLE.
Portia goes on a recruitment trip and has a one night stand with an old classmate from Dartmouth. Portia's partner of 16 years leaves her for a colleague he knocked up. Portia has a deep dark secret. It's that she got knocked up when she was 20 and gave the kid up for adoption. It turns out Portia's son is the brilliant weird kid she met on the trip. She denies a kid who was admitted in order to give the spot to her son. Admission, you get it? Redemption! She gets fired. She ends up with the one night stand. The end.
You know what bothered me most about this book? Other than the 12 hours I'll never get back? Was that for some reason at the end of the book there's this incredibly self indulgent, arrogant Ask the Author section about why she wrote the book and a "group reading guide" (I assume with the laughably optimistic assumption that one day this book with be required reading for some poor schoolchildren) with about 15 discussion questions. Lol, what nerve.
Summary of Admission
"Admissions. Admission. Aren't there two sides to the word? And two opposing sides...It's what we let in, but it's also what we let out."For years, 38-year-old Portia Nathan has avoided the past, hiding behind her busy (and sometimes punishing) career as a
Admission is at once a fascinating look at the complex college admissions process and an emotional examination of what happens when the secrets of the past return and shake a woman's life to its core.
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