The Student Body: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jane Harvard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 14, 1998

What happens when the students at America's oldest university enter the world's oldest profession?
        The Student Body is the smartest, sexiest beach book of the year, written by four Harvard graduates who are as diverse as their characters.

Harvard University can be a menacing place. Academic pressure is intense. Attitude reigns. Racial and sexual politics create a minefield. Toni Isaacs, a gutsy young Harvard student who reports for the campus paper, can handle that--usually. This smart black woman works hard, knows how to dress, and won't back down in a fight.
        Covering a story for the Harvard Crimson, Toni receives a tip: Harvard students--both men and women--are working as prostitutes. Determined to make her mark, Toni finds herself drawn into Boston's sexual underworld, where she encounters strippers, johns, escorts, vice cops, a stash of student sex diaries, and an MBA candidate with a very unusual business plan.
        Toni's investigation ineluctably draws in some of her closest friends, who find their own worlds spinning out of control. This Mod Squad for the nineties stumbles across a scheme that jeopardizes much more than their academic futures and will have readers of this compulsive page-turner wondering just who the real prostitutes at Harvard are.
        Filled with unforgettable characters, mordant wit, and steamy details, The Student Body is written with the sly intelligence and authenticity that only true Harvard graduates can provide. The Student Body is the ultimate campus thriller, a gripping tour de force of suspense and social commentary that gives new meaning to the idea of getting into Harvard.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Harvard University is the scene of a prostitution ring, corporate espionage, kinky sexual relationships, and all manner of skulduggery in this thriller written pseudonymously by four graduates of that lofty institution. Toni Isaac, an ambitious African American reporter with the Harvard Crimson, gets a tip about a prostitution ring involving Harvard students. But her simple idea of a story about students selling themselves to make tuition payments soon escalates to the highest levels of the university and a corporation. A multiracial cast of bright characters, alternately celebrating and castigating their status as Ivy League students or faculty, assist or hinder Toni's search for leads. In the course of her investigation, Toni stumbles into a new romance, copes with the death of a close friend, nearly falls in disgrace, and struggles with her own motives as she wheedles information and breaks laws to get her story. The novel is the result of a six-year collaboration by four Harvard graduates. Despite its many authors, it is a seamless, fast-paced work, filled with the topography and culture of Harvard. Readers who enjoyed Pamela Thomas-Graham's Darker Shade of Crimson , also set at Harvard, will enjoy this thriller as well. Vanessa Bush

Review

The Student Body isn't great literature, but it's a briskly paced thriller with an unusual set of characters, an irreverent view of Harvard, and, as noted, loads of sex. It has "movie" written all over it. -- The Boston Globe, Diane White

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 354 pages
• Publisher: Villard; 1st edition (April 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679448586
• ISBN-13: 978-0679448587
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,085,575 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun for a long hot summer, June 8, 2000

By 

"marycarrieh" (Northeastern United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Student Body (Paperback)

The Student Body is suspenseful, sexy, and hilarious. The setting is Harvard and, it captures the flavor of the college town and the city of Boston. Toni Isaccs, the heroine, is smart and resourceful and passionate about solving the mystery invlving her friends and classmates. Van is an unforgettable character, the sexiest man on campus with a hidden secret. Chase scenes and snide sarcasm alternate to make a really entertaining book. I'm so glad this is finally a paperback!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars An Unabashedly Lame Gimmick, February 6, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Palo Alto) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Student Body: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Marketing
Before I read pjammer's review, I thought I was the only one who was the target of the "fellow reader" spambot from Jane Harvard. Now, I DO subscribe to a number of reading-recommendation mailing lists, and CERTAINLY don't mind if authors honestly told me who they are and why I should read a book (recently discovered Lee Gruenfeld, author of the delightful All Fall Down, this way). Pretending to be a fellow reader, suggesting that "I think Amazon might have it." is another thing altogether.
The Book
Well, I admit I wanted to like it. But the "comically rainbow-coalition-esque," observation of Reader from LA, captured the spirit of the novel completely. The charaters are so Politically Correct, to absurd lengths (Black! Ambitious! Woman! Bisexual! Vietnamese! Sex Machine! Aaack! Just! Shoot! Me!), that you find yourself silently wishing for everyone to die halfway through the novel. No luck. May I suggest that characters be crafted with interesting personalities (that can stand on their own) first, and THEN decide on a race, instead of the other way around? I think it would work much better.
The authors smugly asser their PC-credentials throughout the novel - a white character who refers to a black prostitute as "brown sugar" is a "racist a--hole." Well smack ME upside the head with a Clue-by-Four, if identifying somebody's skin color in an admittedly tacky phrase automatically makes you the scum of the earth, what phrase do we reserve for lynchers, klansmen, and the truely odious troglodytes of society?
The fundemental flaw of this novel is its lack of an authentic "voice." Like white rappers who grew up in the suburbs trying to rap about inner-city life (An aside: where IS Vanilla Ice these days, anyway?), Jane Harvard misses the mark every time she wanders outside of the pristine halls of Harvard. The grit and sex are laughably lame, and the PC attitude grates the nerves of anyone who has ever dealt with authentic racism. Thank God for Amazon's generous return-policies.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Original and Exciting -- but not for the irony-impaired, February 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Student Body: A Novel (Hardcover)

Jane Harvard's collaborative book differs from most of what's on the market in that it's a thriller with a sense of humor, and its characters are not limited to white men. It succeeds both as a page-turner and as an ironic commentary on "multicultural"issues. Obviously, not everyone is into this, but then again, not everyone is into books that require intelligence. I loved it, and got my friends to read it.