Customer Reviews

An Expensive Education

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

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.

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.

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?

Why, oh, why, must everyone who attempts to write a spy novel be compared favorably with Greene and LeCarre ? It's certainly not fair to this book's young author, who's clearly not in their league. However, the very fact that An Expensive Education was published proves- perhaps unintentionally- one of the author's main points: that a Harvard education, while intellectually mediocre, confers upon its recipients entree into the corridors of wealth and power, regardless of merit. The students depicted in the "campus novel" section of the book are almost uniformly shallow, self-absorbed, and elitist. It's not a pretty picture.

The book also suffers from poor editing- "ordinance" instead of ordnance, for example. The spy novel portion was uninteresting and bore little resemblance to what CIA officers actually do.

Everything about this book was superficial and cynical. I did not like it at all, nor did I think that it was particularly well written. The characters were not well developed.

I loved this guy's other book, Twelve, but An Expensive Education is a real stinker. I'm giving it 2 stars for the effort: McDonnell tried ambitiously to weave an international thriller but got all tangled up in the threads. There were 3 major problems.

1st, what McDonnell did so brilliantly in Twelve--mimicking a subculture's idiomatic excentricities--he misses entirely here. Every character basically speaks the same way and thinks about the same things: career advancement and sex. The characters all came off as cardboard cut-outs. 2nd, the focal point of the novel--Hatashil--remains a mystery throughout the novel and we never meet him--ever! It's as if Coppola decided to cut Brando out of Apocalyse Now. It just makes no sense and doesn't reward the reader for the hundres of pages of what seemed like lead-up. 3rd, the book wasn't suspensful at all--in fact, it was pretty boring. At times, I didn't know where a particular character was but I also didn't care. I knew that nothing would happen and if I kept reading he'd get on another plane and be somewhere esle to do more posturing. The 'conflict' was too abstruse and not close enough to home. Why not have the militants arrive in Cambridge and take the professor hostage? Sounds ridiculous but it sure would have held my attention better than what got published.

An Expensive Education is essentially an airport paperback masquerading as something grander. There's nothing wrong with that, I guess, except that what you get in the aiport is more interesting and less expensive.

I just finished reading "An Expensive Education" and was quite taken with it overall. It is not a "great" novel -- after all, how many novels really are "great" and, perhaps more important, how many completely fail at the attempt? Most writers -- even really good ones -- can't spin webs out of webs as well as Le Carre or turn phrases or tell stories as brilliantly or as poignantly as Michael Chabon. But those writers who are "merely" good are numerous, and create very engaging and enjoyable novels, especially in the police detective and spy genres. And this is one of those efforts, a very good, quick-reading and absorbing novel.

I thought that "An Expensive Education" was particularly well written, with a number of interesting observations and insights into a variety of characters, from both personal and political viewpoints. A lot of it rang true to me, even though I did not come from either a priviliged upbringing or attend Harvard for an undergraduate degree.

But isn't that the purpose of novels, i.e. to tell interesting stories about people who you haven't met and places where you haven't traveled?

I really don't understand from where some of the particularly damning reviews on Amazon are coming. Are they envious of McDonell's upbringing? His precociousness? His inside access to literary agents due to his Dad's long standing editorial positions in the magazine and publishing worlds? It's quite understandable but if these factors are going to poison a reader's view before he or she even opens the covers and starts reading, then my respectful suggestion would be to pass on the book and go for another one.

As for the varied plot strands, sure, it's a bit scattered at first. But it quickly starts to add up and McDonell fairly successfully weaves everything together by the end without too much incredulity or strain on the narrative. Quite candidly, these Amazon reviewer complaints remind me of similar ones made about the movie, "Syriana," which I also felt were misplaced, as the plot made perfect sense and was not difficult to follow if a viewer simply paid careful attention during the first fifteen minutes. I have read many books with numerous narrative strands, such as Joyce's "Ulysses," and while McDonell is no Joyce (nor has he ever claimed to be), trust me, "An Expensive Education" is far, far easier to follow and read.

Indeed, you wouldn't know it all from those damning Amazon reviews but this book is a compelling read akin to a page turner which I finished (with some reluctance) in three evenings. I will be recommending it to friends who enjoy novels by authors like Le Carre and will likely give it to a few folks as Holiday presents.

I may have liked this book more if the author hadn't been compared to Greene, LeCarre, Hammett, Hemingway, Barth, Bellow, Roth and Updike on the book jacket. He isn't. This is the stuff you find on the shelf at the airport or grocery store. Better written than some of it, less fun than most of it, but no better than any of it.

There are all the standard elements of pulp fiction: lots of short paragraphs for readers with short attention spans; short sentences with no big words; and cliches. Lots of cliches. So many that after reading a couple of the 69 chapters, you can close the book and write the rest of the book yourself.

All the elements are there:
Saintly guerilla fighter targeted by smart bomb,
Saintly professor and friend of saintly guerilla fighter, suddenly subject to a smear campaign,
Brilliant but gullible CIA agent, former student of saintly professor and contact to saintly guerilla fighter suddenly frozen out by the agency,
Evil National Security Advisor and Agency higher ups, popping in and out of the narrative.
Gee, who's behind it all?
You can put the pieces together more easily than a jigsaw puzzle for three year olds. Why it takes all the characters 294 pages to figure it all out is the real mystery.

Nick McDonnell will never be a Hemingway or even a Hammett, but with a little more maturity, he will be Nick McDonnell, an author of well written predictable pulp fiction.

There are plenty of candidates for the pantheon of great writers. The critics don't have to invent more of them. What we are dangerously short of in this country are intelligent critcs. Shame on you Ms. Kakutani and Messrs. Land and Yardley!

I will keep my review short and sweet. This book was dull. It sounded like it was going to be exciting, but it was not. The characters were pretentious and boring Harvard students and professors. Maybe it is just because I am not part of the Harvard world, but I found them to be annoying and self-centered. I just wanted to finish the book to be done with them. I am going to give the author a second chance and read his first novel "Twelve". I don't recommend this one though.

Expensive Education, the book's title, is better suited for my own error in paying good money for a bad book. Truly sophomoric writing, and I'm thinking high school here.