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28 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A screenplay disguised as a book., September 13, 2009
This review is from: An Expensive Education (Hardcover)
It's not terrible, but An Expensive Education doesn't deserve the hype it's been getting. It has characters, but no real characterization. Every person in the book speaks in the same voice, and it's the voice of a male Harvard graduate in his mid-twenties who grew up in a world of privilege. McDonell relies on brand names (Prada, Louboutin) and band names (Genghis Tron - twice! They must be friends...) to provide personalities for his characters; a lazy trick that might be acceptable for a screenplay but is weak in a book. I'm sure An Expensive Education has been optioned to Hollywood already. With actual actors to flesh out the weak character sketches, it might even make a pretty good movie. But as a book, I'd pass.
The plot itself is fine, and it is a quick read. But don't be fooled; this is not a book about Africa but rather a book about Harvard people vying for status via Africa. In theory the plot revolves around a massacre an African village, but the key dramatic hinge is really, "will the professor's Pulitzer Prize be revoked?" I'm not sure why I should care about that. But it does give you an idea of where the author's head is at. If you've ever spent a sleepless night worried about YOUR Pulitzer Prize being revoked, I'm sure you will find this book riveting. Me...not so much.
As for the breathy comparisons to Graham Greene, we've all said things we wish we hadn't and I'm sure those reviewers will regret it in the morning.
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22 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
An Expensive Education is Great, but Experience is Priceless, September 5, 2009
This review is from: An Expensive Education (Hardcover)
I have not read Nick McDonell's much-ballyhooed novel "Twelve," which he wrote as a mere 17-year old. But, having read "An Expensive Education," an espionage thriller he submits at the tender age of 25, my guess is that he was better served by the more familiar environment of Manhattan's upper crust adolescent playrgrounds.
"An Expensive Education" makes all the right noises. It feels like LeCarre - to continue a debate undertaken by two other reviews - in all the familiar places, but its hollow. McDonell goes through the motions of mystery, of relationships, of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, and professional politics.
The artifice is particularly glaring when McDonnel tries to write his female protagonist, Harvard professor and Pulitzer winner Susan Lowell, a character he writes with a sexuality that feels forced and formulaic. Where McDonell does hit on all cylinders is right in the dorm rooms and campus coffee klatches of Harvard.
Writing David - his African ex-pat - McDonell's voice finds an artful and authentic angst, longing, and inner conflict: brilliance and ambition clashing with insecurity and fear. His Harvard CIA man, Teak, is too much of a stretch for McDonnel as he troops through international intrigue on Africa's horn, and he becomes more a lens for the plot than a character in his own right.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Unrealized potential, December 1, 2009
This review is from: An Expensive Education (Hardcover)
An Expensive Education is more than the sum of its parts, which is fortunate but makes it difficult to write a review that reflects its nature. For an author whose talent was lauded at a very early age, the writing is sometimes painfully immature. He is overly expository in early going, especially when he rushes to introduce every aspect of a character upon their first appearance. The plot - a 21st-century twist on the 70s-cinema themes of political subterfuge, double-cross and nesting dolls of suspicion - is ripe for a more involved treatment than it actually receives. The characters, of which there are just a few too many, are usually little more than tools to advance the plot around three major players: a painfully unlikable caricature of a precious Harvard newspaper writer and aspiring intellectual, her African-born boyfriend who is self-aware yet still itching to assimilate, and a CIA operative whose conscience belies his mission. Of those, only David - the boyfriend, a stranger in a strange land that he years to adopt - has any measurable complexity.
Nonetheless, this story compels. In an industry overwhelmed by kiddie vampire novels, ham-fisted Brownian adventure tales and disposable serial-killer mysteries, An Expensive Education dares to raise social, political and personal questions in the context of a page-turning thriller. You're unlikely to put it down midstream, but equally unlikely to feel satisfied when it's over. Ultimately, its great shame is its vast unrealized potential - McDonell has barely scratched the surface of his own creative notions and raises a most interesting literary questions: is he bumping against the limitations of his own talent, or afraid to tread in the places where noir pulp evolves into something more interesting?
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