"Fervent and funny... There's no soft focus, no airbursh. She launches into details about which women are matter-of-fact and men are notoriously squeamish. Becca's water breaks, her breasts leak. Becca behaves, for the most part, the way women do when men aren't watching...Jaffee deals big blows but always in small scenes. Nothing is inconsequential. The meaning of a given scene never eludes us either, because Jaffee knows exactly what details to record...The book clips rights along - firmly, effectively."
Review
"Annette Williams Jaffee is a conscious stylist. Adult Education is sparky, mordant and informed by an ironical awareness that help the narrative transcend its fashionable theme - the sisterhood of two young women friends in middle class America...Exuberantly moving, the book brings fresh illumination to the old obsessions by which men and women are united as they are divided - sex and death." -- Times Literary Supplement/ London, March 5, 1982
"Imaginative, searching...Jaffee portrays heartbreaking scenes beautifully...Adult Education is a fine, strong work, one that frequently strikes to the heart of the fearful complexities inherent in human relationships." -- The Dallas Morning News
"Miss Jaffee has fluency, energy, comic verve, and a less pinpointable quality of sheer likeableness. -- The New York Times Book Review
"This is an engaging, engrossing, sometimes wallopingly funny novel. Women will see themselves or their best friends; if they don't know Becca, consciousness raised to the threshold of hysteria, then they'll recognize Ulli, carefully restrained to the point of perfection. Men will want to know both women for comparative if not carnal knowledge... The discovery of Jaffee is a delight." -- The Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 19, 1981
See all Editorial Reviews
