First published 1980
At Benton College, a progressive women's institution, the faculty gather for their usual earnest conversations about literature and life. Among them moves the narrator, a poet and professor who observes his colleagues with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. But the real catalyst arrives in the form of a visiting novelist, a woman whose talent for verbal cruelty matches her literary gifts. She dissects everyone around her with surgical precision, turning dinner parties into battlegrounds and faculty meetings into opportunities for intellectual assassination. The narrator finds himself both fascinated and repelled by her performances, recognizing in her a kindred spirit who shares his gift for seeing through academic pomposity. As the semester unfolds, these two brilliant observers engage in a war of wits, each trying to outdo the other in exposing the vanities and pretensions of their colleagues. What emerges is a portrait of academic life where intelligence becomes a weapon and wit serves as both shield and sword. The real question becomes whether anyone can survive unscathed when two masters of malice turn their attention to the same small world.
Genres: satire, literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, academia, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Benton College
Period: 20th-century
277 pages · Paperback · Avon Books