Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is delicious and entirely satisfying. It follows the narrator, a 58 year old college professor and frustrated novelist, as she fantasises over Vladimir, a new professor on campus. And fantasise she does. Not only in the lascivious sense, but also in the strictest sense. After meeting this younger man just once, the possibility of being with him consumes her.
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And it’s this fantasising that helps her begin writing what she believes will be her greatest novel. Something that will give her career a second lease of life, and the recognition she believes she truly deserves. She writes feverishly, and with the same passion she feels for Vladimir. So much so that the text is littered with comparisons between writing and sex.
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I found the narrator to be despicable, but I’m not put off by unlikeable characters. She is manipulative, unapologetically judgemental, dismissive and condescending. Her hypocrisy is so unadulterated that it’s entirely believable. And this all comes in the delightfully quaffed package of a stylish middle aged woman. She believes that this façade has her students and colleagues fooled, but as the novel went on I did wonder how many of them had actually been on to her all along.
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And in some ways, that’s all fine. Who doesn’t fool themselves into believing their own hype? But when the self-confidence turns into all out fantasy, and the fantasy into a foolish plan, then our narrator really sets herself up for something. Looking back, Jonas tells us from the first page what to expect. There are clues to the narrator’s true nature littered through the book, but it’s so well observed and elegantly written that I let most of it go unnoticed.
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Overall, Vladimir is classic, timely, and immensely enjoyable.
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Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this e-book in exchange for an honest review.

Jonas's protagonist is a 58 year old woman who enjoys a career in academia while upholding an emotionally distant relationship with her accused husband. Early on Jonas introduces the theme of obsession which the protagonist personifies through her need to feel desire yet utterly avoid the idea of being the object of desire. This urge seemingly juxtaposes the protagonist's status as objectively 'hot', as identified by her female students, daughter and titular character throughout the progression of the narrative.
She feels suffocated in all aspects of her life, it is only Vladimir who provides a breath of fresh air, something new and forbidden to focus on, a competitive prize to covet. The unnamed protagonist begins to unravel as she attempts to dissect her needs from her desires, transgressing the male gaze. Jonas utilises foreshadowing in didactic fashion by narrating the evolution of the woman's role within society, and in academia, which is held in contingency with wider conversations of power dynamics and degrees of agency that women exert in heteronormative relationships and queer relationships.
The protagonist provides running commentary on the on the behaviours of the young students under her tutelage without the usual scorn that derides millennial/Gen Z discourse. That is not to say that the protagonist does not sneer at others, but Jonas expertly manages to reflect that attitude inwards to direct scorn toward the toxic culture within academia. Jonas calls out the exclusivity culture which harms non-white bodies within the humanities and wider dating cultures. A pinnacle moment in the text is when we see the protagonist dismiss the concerns of a black student and coerce her beliefs away from the oppression of black identity. The protagonist only appears remorseful when when she realises that she has lost the admiration that she yearns for from the validation of her students. Once again this reinforces that she does not want to be desired but admired, that she believes there is a line between the two and she thinks the former is less worthy of respect than the the latter, she accuses everyone of holding the exact same views as her.
I did find that the pacing within the latter third of the novel progressed rapidly compared to the previous narrative pace but I speculate that was a deliberate literary device utilised by Jonas to imitate the sudden change in character and genre as we enter thriller territory. I believe this risk paid off as we saw the protagonist seemingly snap, pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable through her behaviour toward Vladimir. We witness in real, rapid time the consequences of her actions, the accelerated downward spiral.
Jonas manages to successfully tiptoe the tightrope of balancing plot with intense character study, portraying the lives of flawed attributes within ourselves and the consequences that these can bring, as well as the rewards. Through the claustrophobic lens enshrined in the campus novel microcosm she focalises the literary and social debates of our time into one novel. A novel that deserves to be savoured and enjoyed, consumed and desired. Vladimir is a triumph. I would highly recommend this timely and provocative novel to all, and I want to portray my thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the eARC of Vladimir by Julia May Jonas.

I enjoyed the narrator's voice in this book and her relationships with her daughter and her husband and her various colleagues.

I think it must have been the vibrant red of the cover and the powerful feeling of frustration and despair that the image evokes. I briefly read the synopsis and was intrigued to see how I’d tackle this literary novel of obsession, academia and whistleblowing.

Our narrator is a well-loved English professor at a small town college. Her husband is also a professor at the same college and he has been accused of inappropriate behaviour with his students. Their marriage has always been open but these accusations have put a strange dynamic on their relationship. Enter a handsome, married, young writer Vladimir and our narrator’s head is fully turned with no way back.

I didn’t care for our narrator very much at all. I’m not sure if I was supposed to like her or if all my repellence of her was intended but it made it quite difficult for me to read from her perspective. Sometimes she seems very misogynistic and other times, she seems to want women to succeed and be empowered. It meant that I couldn’t trust her and therefore, none of the events of the book had much credibility or certainty that they happened in the manner that they apparently did.

Our narrator’s daughter Sidney is having her own relationship problems and she turns up seeking her mother’s support. Sidney is a lesbian and her presence brings discussion of sexuality into the narrative. Our narrator reflects on how restrictive heterosexuality is and how happy she is that her daughter doesn’t have those bindings. It’s an interesting way of thinking about something that we have no control over. As much as some people would seriously disagree, no one chooses to be in the ‘predictable container’ of heterosexuality, just as no one chooses to be gay. I wanted more clarification of what was really being said here and unfortunately, I never got it.

Although I wasn’t convinced that the narrator was on her husband’s accusers’ side, she does seem to acknowledge the importance of fighting injustice. However, she does remove herself from them by saying ‘what they felt were the systemic wrongs of the world’, indicating she doesn’t share their views. She seems to think these girls are speaking out against her husband as some kind of identity experiment, which really jarred me.

Towards the end of the book, the pace quickened and our narrator hints at what she’s really capable of. I was scared of her and I didn’t really know what would happen to Vladimir, who she becomes dangerously obsessed with. I don’t think this bit of excitement really made up for the incredibly slow, dull plot though.

Vladimir had a lot of potential and if it had been told to me via a more sympathetic, likeable voice, I possibly would have liked it more. Perhaps she is supposed to be an unlikeable, unreliable narrator and if that’s the case, mission accomplished! However, it wasn’t clear and therefore I didn’t really know what to do with the story or what it was trying to tell me. If you like thought-provoking, dark romances with not an awful lot of plot, it might just be for you but it wasn’t really my cup of tea.

This book is about professor whose husband is accused of having inappropriate relationships with his students, and about her own developing obsession with a man called Vladimir.

I honestly had no idea what to expect from this book but the concept seemed really intriguing to me. I overall found this book gripping and interesting, especially the second half, but it did falter in some parts.

I think a lot of important topics are discussed, such as power dynamics and privilege, which was interesting. Some parts of the book went over my head, I think someone cleverer than me would be able to point out and understand the symbolism, but I didn't mind that I didn't get it.

The narrator is very very hard to like, but you do sympathise for her in certain situations, and she reacts in a unique way to the things that happen to her.

Vladimir was a rollercoaster and a bit of a wild ride but overall was really interesting.

I went blind to read this book. And I was quite fascinated somehow by the unnamed narrator. She is now 58 and her husband is accused of sex abuse of his students. They are both profesors and work quite closed. They have an open marriage that both agrred to. So is nothing she would not agrees, "they fuck". It was a greeping story for me anyway and a fresh topic couse usually all main characters are younger. The most interesting thing that happen to her right now is an arrival of the new proffesor Vladimir. 20 years younger but so attractive to die. We get to know how she met her husband, who she cheeted, what she feels , desire, regret. She is honest and I loved that although I would not approve everything she did.

Thank you Netgalley and Pan Macmillan Publishers for the Arc

This is a brilliantly written novel that considers several contemporary ideas in a compelling way. MeToo, the issue of the changing face of academia, ageing, and marital relationships, as well as mental health, femininity and masculinity. Written from the point of view of an academic, there are some terrific references to classic texts and a particularly effective style with phrases that aren't easy to forget. There is a clamp-hold on the narrative that is superb, and the reader is wafted through the feelings and thoughts of this intelligent woman and her desires and relationships. Highly recommended.

A novel that feels like a bastard grandchild of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Older and younger academic couples wrestle with desire, loss, old age and each other, their mutually-assured destruction fuelled on booze, intellectual snobbery, and snappy comebacks. Without much reason to, it becomes increasingly melodramatic, then ends with a series of sketchy chapters as though the writer could neither bear to finish nor quite bear to carry on.

The (unnamed) narrator, an English professor, refers many times to the importance of the formal structure of literature, as opposed to the content. Is Vladimir, then, a masterpiece of form? Well frankly I couldn’t be bothered to give that close a reading. What’s certain is that it’s full of content - people just keep turning up, incidents just keep happening. And always there are Issues: huge Issues: sex and ageing and gender and abuse and art and addiction and… everything, really.

Like Who’s Afraid, this is centrally a story about power and weakness and the trade-offs between them. Also like it, all of the characters are fundamentally unsympathetic. But watching the play you never resent the time you spend with those characters - you engage, you laugh, you even feel sorry for them sometimes. I never had that experience with Vladimir - I wanted to be shot of the lot of them.

In the end, I was left with some respect for the author, and a hope and a wish that she can do better in future. It felt like this was a novel in which the author was simply trying too hard - and that at least is an honourable way to fail.

This book is far too wordy for me. I could not get into it at all, I am afraid. It is too American intellectual for me. I skimmed and read bits but could not discern much of a plot. It seemed to be all explanations of thoughts and feelings and encounters. It did have a reasonable ending which I could understand, so one star for that. I guess I am just not clever enough to appreciate this!

God how I loved Julia May Jones’ writing! From the first sentence, ‘When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.’ I found it delicious and knew I’d never want it to end.

This book has a very clear sense of its own aesthetic and mood. It’s a beautiful living room furnished in a mid-century modern style. Clear lines, fresh linens, controlled decadence. Everything is perfectly thought-out and just so.

The character building through the attention paid to detail is fantastic. I love a campus novel, but I think this is the first one I’ve read from the perspective of a professor. It was an interesting reversal; especially because our narrator is such a great creation. She’s compelling, charming and a talented manipulator. I found her internal tension very fun – her compulsive self-awareness battling the dark corners she refuses to look at.

John, the narrator’s husband, was more of a vague idea of a character. But it didn’t bother me that much, the story knows he’s not that interesting. A pleasant surprise was Vladimir, the character. There was a glimpse of true genre savviness in the choices he makes. Even though we spend very little time with him, it was a nice narrative turn.

What bums me out is that I thought this could be one of my new favourite books, and then it just decided to try and have a plot in the last 30%. The shift in pace and action was quite jarring and…boring. I felt like it could’ve benefitted from more vagueness to be honest. The ending and the epilogue felt tacked on and artificial. And yet, I still think of the whole as a great reading experience.

I really wish the UK edition had kept a version of the US cover because god, it’s so good!!

Thank you so much to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for the free review copy!

There are numerous dangers in consuming too many American college novels before your brain has fully solidified, but the main one might be that it’s all too easy to form a certain sympathy for disappointed men in corduroy, would-be Roths torn between the glory of creation and lowering themselves to turgid, earth-bound temptations. You might fall for one, or even worse, as the
unnamed narrator of “Vladimir,” Julia May Jonas’s confident debut, turn into one:

‘I often feel that perhaps I am an old man more than I am an oldish white woman in her late fifties (the identity I am burdened with publicly presenting, to my general embarrassment) [because] old men are composed of desire.’

This Professor of Desire knows of which she speaks - her husband, the aptly named John, is a lifelong skirt-chaser. He’s also a fellow academic, the chair of the Literature department, and under suspension, pending investigation into reports he engaged in inappropriate relationships with female students.

Though ‘Vladimir’ is marketed as a #metoo
novel, the Narrator has, until
the final pages, scant sympathy for her husband’s young lovers. She points out repeatedly that
he broke no laws, breached no official rules of conduct, and for the most part finds it difficult to respect girls who want the game to continue only while they
feel they’re winning. No doubt many veteran players feel the same. For all that, the book ends with a powerful, if slightly hasty description of how it feels to be on the other side of such abuses of power, and there’s a paragraph or two which afforded an interesting, if fleeting, insight into the intersection between race and sex.


The Narrator is good, deranged, company, an intelligent woman of hidden shallows, who attacks life with gusto, non-judgementally admiring every woman but herself - ‘I didn’t picture my upper arm aloft, flesh hanging like a ziplock bag half-filled with pudding.’ She makes some wild choices, which lead her to great grief (one loss in particular shocked me more than it should have, sending me straight to my keyboard).

In the end, I was dismayed to discover the cursor had hit 95%. The denouement felt perfunctory, the choices there more expedient than the rest. Wishing Jonas had take a little longer to expand towards her conclusion can only be a good thing and I really look forward to reading what comes next. Thanks to NetGalley for the copy.

Bold, smart and provocative, it's quite hard to review this book because the story doesn't have the usual shape and boundaries - it spills out in different directions and can't be effectively neatened. All of which are good things. There's definitely a Nabokov/Lolita allusion, though there are no 'nymphets', nothing underage, though there are age-gap and power-gap relationships.

What really makes the book is the voice of the narrator: a clever, acute English literature professor dealing with aging, tensions with her daughter, her professor husband's hearing for unprofessional affairs with students, and her own sudden lust for a 40-year old adjunct called, yes, Vladimir.

This reminded me of early Lionel Shriver for the probing intelligence of the character and writing, and the spiky characterisation of our narrator. She asks those uncomfortable questions about consent vs. coercion, victimhood vs. agency, fidelity and open relationships. And I loved the authentic portrayal of academic life and that strange - and strangely satisfying... when it doesn't go wrong - relationship between lecturers and their students.

The final third heads off into a surreal Nabokovian direction and feels a little uncontrolled. So not quite as polished as it could be but Jonas is a writer to watch.

Vladimir is a very interesting novel in which the main character and her husband both work in academia. He is a professor who faces allegations of sexual harassment and she develops an obsession of her own.

Vladimir is an audacious story about gender, power, and shame told through the charged voice of an English professor at a small liberal arts college. The personal and political come to an explosive conclusion in this clever debut.

Julia May Jonas is a characterization genius and a master of voice; you'll never forget handsome Vladimir, infuriating John, or the chaotic yet fascinating narrator. I adored this book and finished it in 48 hours. Just the thing to pull anyone out of a reading slump!

A complete knockout. You're not prepared for this.This novel contained a lot of beautifully written and descriptive material. This novel is beautifully written and descriptive of how the protagonist moved through her world. Vladimir delves into feminism, cultural expectations of middle-aged women, mental health, and desire. I felt like I fully grasped who the main character 'was,' all of her nuance, understanding, and perspective on the world, and how she moved through it. This book is a lot of fun! Amazing book!
Can't wait to read more from the author!

When I read that this was a book about a woman whose husband, John, had been accused of having sex with his students, the name 'Vladimir' instantly triggered an expectation of a nod to Vladimir Nabokov's 'Lolita'. Or maybe that's just how my mind worked. Instead, there's no established reason why the love interest of our ageing English professor should be a younger, Russian heritage male with that name.

There are some interesting but often undeveloped themes.

If sex with students took place at a time when it wasn't technically a crime, when all the women involved were of age and consented, and there was no rule in the college's system that forbade it, is it still a crime? Can today's rules be applied retrospectively?
Is it appropriate to treat the wife of a suspected maybe-criminal as somehow complicit in that crime because she hasn't instantly kicked her husband out and started divorce proceedings?
Should that wife be hounded out of her workplace because today's students (who haven't slept with said husband) feel a bit 'icky' about what might have happened to their predecessors?

Good questions. Interesting questions. Sadly, not really ones that get much actual attention.

There's another one. If both the wife and the husband are really quite horrible people, does that make all the accusations and consequences somehow OK?

She's vain, self-obsessed and controlling but she's also immensely kind to her students and invested in their success even when she thinks they are shallow narcissists who really only want to discuss their own opinions.

Does a cheating husband - even one who's part of a more-or-less 'open' relationship - give the wife permission to plot her own obsessive affair with another man?

Vladimir is muscular, a talented writer, and he has a wife who has previously tried to kill herself, seemingly because his writing has been more successful than theirs. It's hard to like either of them much.

When the teacher plays out her obsessive fantasies to win the object of her affection, it all gets way too silly for words. I don't wish to give away the plot other than to say there are shades of 'Misery' which even the protagonist admits to.

Finally, the ending is ridiculous. It reads as if the author got a call from her editor reminding her that the first draft was due and she drank too much and cracked out a WTF ending to get it all over and done with. It's clumsy and careless and left me thinking that if the author couldn't be bothered to finish it properly, why should I as a reader take the book at all seriously.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for my copy.

The book is an intense, claustrophobic character study of a 58 year old female professor at an small, liberal arts college in upstate New York. She’s in an open marriage with fellow professor John, who is under investigation for past sexual relationships with his young female students.

Our first-person narrator is struggling with her own self-esteem, her writing and her ageing body when she becomes obsessed with Vladimir Vladinski, a newly appointed professor and celebrated novelist.

The writing is smart, propulsive and incisive and the book is very of the moment in terms of its dissection of power dynamics, the generation gap and the #metoo movement.

It’s deliciously funny and while it’s not a thriller, the story takes a couple of dark turns along the way as it unfolds. The ending caught me off guard. The writing reminded me of Lionel Shriver at her best and the reading experience was not unlike reading Mrs March by Virginia Feito.

Worthy of the hype. If you enjoy character studies, books with an older female protagonist and a little bit of saucy noir, you’ll love this. Vladimir is quite the ride and I really loved it. 4-4.5/5 ⭐️

*Many thanks to the author, publisher @picadorbooks @panmacmillan for an advance digital copy of the book. As always this is an honest review. Vladimir will be published here on 26 May 2022 and in the US on 1 February.*

Firstly, I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC, provided in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, this novel was one of the times I had to wonder whether I had picked up something entirely different from what everyone else appeared to be raving about. Because, surely, this wasn't it?

Vladimir touches upon some of the most scalding themes of the past few years: #metoo, ageism, power plays and sexual agency. The narrator is a 58-year-old English professor at a college in New York whose husband John - once a fellow popular professor at the same college - has suffered a dramatic fall from grace after several former students came forward to expose the affairs he had with them while they were enrolled in the faculty. The narrator had always known about these affairs, carried out in the context of an open marriage and is, herself, now increasingly obsessed with Vladimir - a younger new professor and emerging novelist with a wife and a 3-year-old daughter.

The narrator is a textbook narcissist: self-obsessed, vain, incapable of accepting her ageing body. This, in theory, made for a great twist on the #MeToo theme: we'd look at these allegations and the consequences of them not through the eyes of a stilted wife, rather from an unempathetic narrator who despises her husband and yet despises these young women more: "I want to throw them all a Slut Walk," she says about them, "and let them know that when they’re sad, it’s probably not because of the sex they had, and more because they spend too much time on the internet, wondering what people think of them."

The premise doesn't play out. While I usually prefer complex prose - bring on the subordinates! - this book does a whole lot telling and not a lot of showing. We are told that the narrator is obsessed with Vladimir because he's hot and younger and mildly successful, over and over again, but we are not shown it. Dialogues are told, rather than shown. Feelings are told, rather than shown. Even actions are told and not shown. How that's even possible, I truly do not understand. She goes on and on and on and on, with no resolution, anywhere.

Furthermore, being in the mind of a narcissist, or a sociopath, is supposed to be fun. This was not fun, and the trick that Ottessa Moshfegh played well in Eileen, creating a protagonist that's often revolting and always insufferable, J May Jonas sadly does not pull off here. The novel is, to put is simply, long-winded and boring, to the point that it had me stop reading at around 41% and jump to the end, where I was hit with such a "plot twist" that I did a double take and had to read again just to be sure I hadn't opened another kindle my mistake. What was /that/?

I am bitter because I wanted to like this book: the premise was great (though the cover isn't. What is that?) but it just didn't play out. Unfortunately, the best part of this novel was the very first sentence: "When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell they also loved me." All that followed didn't resonate with me.

Vladimir is a novel about desire, consent, and the academic world, as an English professor deals with accusations against her husband whilst becoming obsessed with a younger academic. When an academic power couple are left with their reputations waning after he is accused of relationships with his students, and she sticks by him because they've always had an agreement in terms of relationships with others, the situation already seems complex. But when the narrator, a woman getting older and hoping to write another book, becomes obsessed with Vladimir, the new academic in the department, everything gets even more complicated.

Though the title suggests the book is about Vladimir and the narrator's obsession, the book is more about her in general, as she tries to work out her life now, managing desire and relationships, and coming to terms with who people see her as. There's a lot of toxic relationships and flawed characters, especially the narrator who is displayed with all her unlikeable thoughts as well as more understandable ones, but these don't quite go where you might expect, which is a notable point about the novel: it doesn't go where it seems to be heading.

I liked how the characters are pretty unlikeable, and very pretentious (there's a ridiculous scene in which the narrator gives Vladimir praise about his novel basically as a list of playing to his ego), though it took a moment to get used to that. The book is trying to say things about consent and desire, and I don't know how well it does that, but I thought the characterisation was clever and I liked how it seemed like it would veer into another genre, but actually returned firmly to the literary novel about the messy world of desire.

Packed with literary references and set in an academic world, Vladimir will perhaps appeal to some people more than others, but it's an interesting version of the 'academic has been sleeping with his students' novel, seeing as it's mostly about his wife who doesn't really care about that.

Jonas' "Vladimir" has some strong "My Dark Vanessa" vibes; well-written and fast-paced character-study.

A thoughtful and composed novel about the grey areas of consent. Obviously drawing from Lolita as the title suggests, the narrator - a fifty-something college professor embroiled in her husband’s campus sex scandal - is neither victim nor villain. The questions around campus life and consent might be the things that define the novel to the era but far more compelling are her musings on what it takes to be a writer; how we define success in the arts; what it is to desire and be desired in middle age. The twist in the book was wholly unexpected and stopped this being a simplistic narrative of the wronged woman again. Ultimately this is a book about how any desire, literary, sexual or anything, cannot be neatly contained within society’s parameters. It’s a great book for anyone who wants to read about a self-assured but realistic older woman narrative.