Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

This is how depressed people behave, she suddenly thought, taking a mental step back to scrutinize the cross-legged person in the center of her slovenly nest. But the thought of being depressed made her smile again. She had never thought of herself as a depressive person. Depressive people rent their garments and howled in grief and took to their beds...well, like this. But had she ever felt, actually, depressed? She was a contained person, that was all. Even-keeled. Perhaps a little judgmental, but who could fault her for that? She judged for a living, didn't she, and it was ingrained, and she was a responsible representative of whatever it was she represented.

-Admission

Another short review coming up, seeing as I should get to the NaNoWriMo halfway mark (25,000 words) today, but I have about 2,500 words to go to get there - I inevitably fall behind midweek and have to spend the weekend catching up. Still, I'm kind of amazed that I've gotten so far.

Anyway: Admission. The story centers on Portia Nathan, an employee in the Office of Admission at Princeton University. Portia's job requires her to travel all over New England and meet with up-and-coming potential Princetonians, then to hunker back down in New Jersey to read application after application. During this particular academic season, she also copes with the end of her sixteen-year relationship and tries to come to terms with an event from her past.

Does that sound rather boring? It's not, really, and it's well written, but I'm having trouble mustering up a lot of enthusiasm. To put it simply, I just didn't like Portia. I can't think of one thing I liked about her. She mopes her way through the story - it's understandable, considering her circumstances, but still rather tiring for the reader slogging through nearly 500 pages with her. When she gets energetic, she just gets strident.

Then there's that mystery from her past. To author Korelitz's credit, I didn't figure it out exactly. However, when the entire story was laid bare, I thought it strained credulity a bit.

I was also disappointed (if I may nitpick, and I think I may) with some sloppiness I noticed. On page 399, Portia is meeting with her colleagues to discuss candidates. It is mentioned that a minor character named Jordan is out of town due to a family emergency; a character specifically mentions something he will tell her "when she gets back tomorrow." Two paragraphs later, on page 400, the characters are still in the same meeting - yet one reads the line "Jordan shook his head and laughed." Buh? So either there are two tertiary characters named Jordan, which is not implausible, but certainly confusing, or someone made a fairly glaring error. Unfortunate, either way.

Up next: I'm enjoying the delightfully nerdy Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea. True story: Shea owns 7 different editions of the OED. I love it.