There's a new batch of campus novels - just it time for good reading during this spring of ... [+] self-isolation.

Campus closed? Still self-isolating? Fed up with zoom? You need some entertainment, or at least a bit of distraction? Well, nows a good time to curl up with the latest campus novel, and this year brings a good crop for your consideration.

The campus novel continues to push its boundaries, serving as a vehicle for all kinds of fictional explorations. Heres my recommendations of five recent good reads, including tales of love, revenge, reminiscence, intimacy and loneliness; you know, the typical campus scene.

In Real Life, Brandon Taylor covers three days in the life of Wallace, a black, gay graduate student in biochemistry at an unnamed university in the midwest (although it sure resembles the University of Wisconsin, where Taylor was once a biochemistry student himself). Taylor brings the precision of a scientist to his descriptions of Wallaces desires and defenses, at war with each other throughout the story. And he captures the ennui of those caught between the lure and the loneliness of academic science, trapped in an existence that doesnt qualify as a real life - Stay here and suffer, or exit and drown.

A search for purpose, complicated by being black in a white space, suffering his own estrangement from these people he calls his friends is Wallaces struggle, and its told bleakly but beautifully in Taylors debut novel.

Published in 2019, Richard Russos Chances Are... is not a campus novel so much as a college nostalgia (the title drawn from the Johnny Mathis classic that backgrounded a generations foreplay). Three men, now in their sixties, life-long friends since their undergraduate days at Minerva College, get together on Marthas Vineyard for a reunion. Forty years earlier theyd come to the same beach house for a post-graduation farewell weekend, accompanied by Jacy Calloway, a fellow student with whom all three were in love. That weekend was the last that Jacy was seen or heard of, a disappearance thats haunted the three men ever since.

Mixed in with reminiscing about their Minerva days and disclosing the triumphs and trials of their lives, the three men remain obsessed with Jacy - and what became of her. Their preoccupation bends much of the novel into a mystery - too melodramatically at times. But nobody does rueful masculinity as well as Russo, and his powers are on poignant display here, particularly when exploring the often fraught bonds between fathers and sons.

The Truants by Kate Weinberg is a twisty tale narrated by Jess Walker, whos been drawn to enroll in a drab college in East Anglia so she can study under Dr. Lorna Clay, an enigmatic, provocative expert on Agatha Christie and the author of The Truants,in which she puts forth her lifes theme - writers must live dangerous, selfish lives in the pursuit of unique insights.

With gestures to Donna Tartts The Secret History, this debut novel is a blend of murder mystery, coming-of-age story, campus intrigue and academic pretense. Jess and her three eerie friends (Georgie, Nick and Alec - all Clay aficionados) galavant through the full landscape of young adult emotions - rebellion, friendship, envy, lust, treachery - into adulthood, doing their best to cope with the betrayals they regularly deal to one another. Great characters, lots of deceit, messy love triangles, and several intriguing asides for Christie lovers, this is an enticing read.

We Wish You Luck by Carline Zancan is story about three aspiring writers attending a highly competitive, low-residency MFA program at Fielding College. Zancan, herself an MFA graduate from Bennington, spins an absorbing, suspenseful tale about the culture - the recognition and the rejection, the closeness and the competitiveness - that develops in graduate writing programs.

After Jimmy, one of the novels featured trio of students, is devastated by a lacerating critique of his workshop poem by the hotshot writer leading the class, the story turns to his colleagues revenge. Reading like a low-speed thriller, this is a novel that honors the hard craft of good writing and respects the obligated response of serious reading. It lays bare the torture and triumph of becoming a writer and how writers shape one another - for better or worse.

A staple among campus novels is the satire of academias pretentious and insularity. This year that base is covered by Scott Johnstons Campusland, a sharply written and hilarious send-up of the elite Devon University, not so subtly modeled after Yale. Johnston takes aim at the precious sensibilities of todays campuses, skewering everything from trigger warnings, safe places, tenure tussles, Title IX excesses and deficiencies, diet fads and identity politics.

The cultural wars are fought all around the central character, Ephraim Eph Russell, an earnest assistant professor of English who is unlucky enough to be falsely accused of two incidents of misconduct. The first - trumped up by competing honchos in Devons camps of progressive students - is that he allowed racially insensitive language to be used in a class on Mark Twain. The second - a frame job by undergrad Lulu Harris, a histrionic, social climbing ,it girl - is that Eph sexually assaulted her in his office.

Eph is surrounded by a cast of campus archetypes, including the glad-handing president Milton Strauss; overpaid administrators blinded by political correctness; clueless frat boys preoccupied with sex, alcohol, and flatulence; ever-fractionating progressive student groups waging internecine power struggles, and humanities faculty with their agendas of grievance. He has one true ally - his girlfriend DArcy, who also happens to be Milton Strauss administrative assistant. Campusland throws a lot of jabs and, unless you think the academy is too sacrosanct to ever be poked, many strike a chord.

Self-quarantine has left all of us with a lot of time on our hands. Put a book in them instead. For those of you longing for a return to campus, these five novels will take you there, at least for a little bit.

Originally posted here:

Sheltered in Place? Read The Best Of The New Campus Novels - Forbes