Customer Reviews

Death of a Department Chair: A Novel

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Very interesting book. Lot of infighting going on. I would recommend it to anyone. It has nothing to do with the individuals chosen life still. It takes you all over the place. Good mystery. Fast read.

Lots of twistings and turns concerning the death of a university (Texas) professor told from the view of a fellow lesbian lover who is also a
professor in the department.
An unusual, but interesting tale!

Anyone who has spent time in academic department meetings will recognize these characters and their murderous urges. Playful rendering and intriguing read.

Lynn Miller's book opens a window into the arcane and petty realm of academic politics. With a wry sense of humor and a fine literary style, Miller guides the reader through a murder investigation, complete with the complex-and often ridiculous-motives of a variety of characters almost too wacky to be true. Anyone familiar with the worlds of academia or corporate bureaucracy will not only appreciate but will thoroughly enjoy Miller's romp. I highly recommend it to anyone with a sense of humor and a desire for a delightful tale.

I don't know how this book got published. I've read some bad books, and this is seriously the worst I have ever seen, ever. The writing, the characterization, the plot, are all horrible. Then they all merge together to make it even worse. I would try to say something nice like "Well, at least the author seems to be a native English speaker!" except that the author keeps having characters say random things in German, and the line "Dumbstruck am I" (page 77) has got to compete with "Ya know that guy off in whose camper they were whacking" for its awkwardness, but it's worse because you know it was supposed to sound formal whereas "off they were whacking" was from the Beavis and Butthead movie.

The plot is that a woman is murdered and everyone's immediate reaction is to worry they will be the top suspect, then they stand around and complain for 164 pages, and then they have a seance that is successful in calling up the spirit of the dead woman to reveal the killer, even though the only suspension of disbelief previously required by the reader was to believe that there would really be so many lesbians all working together in the same department of the same school in Texas. There are I think 5 characters total, all minor, who aren't lesbians; and two of those are gay men. But the plot: on about page 15 I imagined the worst, stupidest possible ending to the story that could possibly occur, AND THAT WAS WHAT HAPPENED. They hadn't even introduced the characters who did it yet.
The book is also written confusingly in an imaginary 3rd person by an imaginary 1st person who puts editor's notes in the middle of the imagined text for no reason and there are also entries from someone else's diary as well. Yes, yes, it makes about as much sense while you're reading it. I can only imagine the author did this because she realized the book was terrible and wanted to shift the blame onto a poor helpless figment of her imagination. The 3rd person segments don't read like a person would write an autobiography, the diary segments read nothing like a diary -- in fact, most of the people don't even act like people. They act like someone wrote down a single word to describe the character's function and personality (i.e. "Paula - black." Oh, I'm not kidding. There's also "Lester - male," which means that he hates all women who won't have sex with him.)
This book is tagged as being Lesbian Interest, but I can't see how this would interest lesbians aside from the fact that a lot of the characters are lesbians. Like cop stories must all interest cops and histories all interest dead people. And by the system reported above, "Lesbian" is always their main personality trait, which means they have to start doing romantic/sexual things with each other at weird times, like in the middle of grave conversations. Example:

H.& I in my house. In bed, sipping wine. "I have a student who is a potential problem."
Her round face looks sympathetic. "Poor dear. Boy? Girl?"
"Her name is Reggie."
"A crush, do you think?" Hannah puts her finger in her wineglass & drips a few drops between my breasts. Then she licks them. "Um," she says.

If this were a conversation with a male/female, I would be demanding the girl take that wine bottle and smack this inattentive jerk over the head with it. Also, that above piece is supposed to be from a diary -- Samuel Pepys himself would not have been so formal, I tell you.
There is also a weird habit -- made even more weird by the fact that the book is supposed to have been written by one of the characters within it, that instead of describing important actions occuring in a scene, the author instead starts describing the locations of furniture. Characters' thoughts are never explored, in fact they don't even seem to listen to each other when talking face to face. They are good or evil as blatantly as if this were an old-fashioned melodrama, with villains cackling and twirling their mustaches -- which they have because they are men -- and the good guys faults only existing out of bad luck or misunderstandings.

The author is a college professor in a drama department, and maybe if this were a play instead of a book it wouldn't be half so bad. The way that scenery and every single little movement of the characters, including every single time someone licks their lips, which happens a lot it would seem, has to interrupt any existing action in order to be described might then be sensible. And that's about the only compliment or forgiving thing I can say about it.

According to this book, heterosexual men are just the bane of academia. They plagiarize, sexually harass, politically intimidate and backstab. Let's not start on their philandering. Can they be murderers too!?!?!? Thank goodness academia is filled with homosexuals and women (all of whom are brilliant, of course). This book is dreadful.