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Recommended Reading: "Acceptance"
March 6, 2008

If Elinor Lipman would simply write on Danielle Steel's schedule -- no, make that James Patterson's schedule -- I would be content. (Of course, if Elinor Lipman wrote on such a schedule, she probably wouldn't be writing Elinor Lipman books, so scratch that.)

Since she doesn't, I occasionally have to look elsewhere for my comic novel fix, and I'm happy to report I recently found a great addition to my shelves: Susan Coll's Acceptance.

                                                       

Acceptance takes on the wild, wacky world of college admissions. The stage here is suburban Maryland/metro D.C., but as Coll told me in a recent interview (soon to be posted here), it could have been set outside any large U.S. city. As three high-school seniors struggle with their senior-year schedules, family responsibilities, and future dreams, the machinations of their parents and the actions of a frazzled admissions officer affect the kids far more than they know or would admit if they did. 

As other reviews have noted, Coll packs a ton of information and action into this book -- at times maybe too much. But it's far better to read a funny, literate take on modern life that's a little crowded than to read some of the other sparely written novels that cross my transom. Coll is a writer with heart -- more important, with wit. No character is left unskewered. 

Should that be no element? Because "Yates University," the school that connects AP Harry, Taylor, and Maya, is an amalgam of every upstate New York college and university that Coll visited on her many college tours with her three children (the youngest is now a college freshman, the oldest recently graduated). Yates is in a dank, dark, cold corner of the state and has gained attention due to a mistake on the Big Famous List of Best Colleges and Universities that every AP Harry in the nation studies as if it were the Holy Grail. 

While I liked the scenes of the college hopefuls, I savored the chapters featuring Olivia, "acting dean of admissions" at Yates. Olivia has come up smack against the Peter Principle of her own life, and Coll is often at her most entertaining when she shows Olivia's desperate attempts to get what she wants from her married faculty lover and her distracted boss.

What are your favorite comic novels/novelists?

Posted by Bethanne Patrick on March 6, 2008 | Comments (2)