karlmarx. com: A Love Story [Hardcover]

Susan Coll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 10, 2001

Ella Kennedy may not be perfect, but she's smart, she's dedicated, and she's finally managed to find a fascinating thesis subject in the morass of Marxist political theory: Eleanor Marx, the youngest daughter of Karl and a bright light in the Marxist movement, who famously declined after a disastrous love affair. With tenacity, with vigor, Ella Kennedy, Ph.D. student extraordinaire, begins delving into the world of Eleanor just as she takes a job setting up a Marxist mail-order catalogue at the fledgling Institute of Thought in Washington, D.C. -- a veritable three-ring circus.

When Ella's own life begins to parallel Eleanor's -- right down to the domineering father (Ella's is known as the king of discount merchandising) and the distant yet brilliant lover -- the theoretical, the political, and the personal collide in a hilarious romp of a novel. Wacky, heartwarming, and deliciously smart, this novel of heartbreak and hilarity on the doctoral circuit is the intersection of Laura Zigman, Nora Ephron, and Richard Russo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A 20th-century graduate student discovers that she and Karl Marx's daughter are doppelg„ngers in this heartfelt but awkward debut novel. Modern-day Ella Kennedy is a Ph.D. candidate struggling to complete her dissertation on Eleanor Marx before her wealthy father cuts her off. To support herself, Ella lands a job at a consulting firm called the Institute of Thought, whose sole client a group known as the Neoclassicists for Universal Thought and Study (NUTS) wants Ella to set up a Web site hawking Karl Marx merchandise. She soon falls in love with a stammering, attractive Englishman (who happens to looks just like Hugh Grant), despite the fact that he's married. He moves in with her, refuses to talk about his past and begins writing an existentialist play set in a discount store. As this untenable situation deteriorates, Ella begins to pick up disturbing echoes of her life in the history of Eleanor Marx, who fell in with a no-good Englishman of her own a century before. Will Ella share Eleanor's tragic fate? By the end, the question is leached of interest, overwhelmed by Coll's labored humor and by the meandering story line. Most problematic is the wildly inconsistent tone: sometimes the novel reads like satire (TV crews camp outside Ella's workplace hoping to catch a glimpse of what they believe is America's last remaining Marxist), and at other times, it reads like the most banal kind of realism (for example, giving far too much detail on Ella's failure to understand PageMaker and HTML). The novel has potential the irony of exploiting Marx for financial gain is a promising premise, as is the aimlessness of a young woman without a cause but it never quite reaches fruition. Agent, Melanie Jackson.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Farcical and full of plot twists, Coll's novel is a poignant tale of insecurity and obsession. Ella Kennedy is a graduate student in political theory, struggling to write a doctoral thesis about Karl Marx's daughter, Eleanor, while supporting herself as a waitress. Things seem to be looking up when she moves to Washington, D.C., to create a commercial Web site about Marx for the Institute of Thought, but shortly thereafter Ella meets Nigel, an absent-minded, emotionally vulnerable ornithologist whose wife has left him, and, in spite of his self-absorption, falls madly in love. Flashing back and forth between the chaos in Ella's own life and the life of the unhappy Eleanor Marx, Coll examines the question, Why do otherwise intelligent women get involved with men who take advantage of them? Although the ending is unsatisfying, as Ella doesn't seem to learn much from her travails, the reader will gain a great deal of insight into the ways in which passion can mislead even the most rational, educated woman. Bonnie Johnston
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First edition. edition (April 10, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743200039
• ISBN-13: 978-0743200035
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,811,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Coll is the author of four novels. Acceptance, a satire of the college admissions process, was made into a 2009 television movie starring Joan Cusack and Mae Whitman. Her work has appeared in publications including the International Herald Tribune, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. She lives with her husband in Washington DC and New York, and is the mother of three children----and she's a three-time Beach Week survivor.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice little book from first time author, May 11, 2001

By 

J. Meyer - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: karlmarx. com: A Love Story (Hardcover)

I'd like to add half a star to make it a 3-1/2 star rating, but format's format

I live in DC, so maybe that adds to why a liked it, but I think this book would generally appeal to any person who has a habit of getting stuck in absurd situations and is too shy or directionless to pull out. That's the main character's flaw. It was graduate school for me, as well as for main character Ella Kennedy.

Ella faces the absurdities of an unfinished disertation, her DC think-tank, and relationships with her parents, boyfriend, and ex-bestfriend. At the same time, I enjoyed the reconsiderations of Karl Marx, and the parallel story of Karl Marx's doomed daughter (the subject of Ella's errant disertation).

But more entertaining for me were the generational differences Ella must ford through; from her boss's instruction to whip out a web-page overnight (even though the computer doesn't even have a modem) to her super-capitalist dad who is uninterestedly humored by her daughter's dabblings in the history of Marx. A live in British boyfriend who smokes like a chimney and can only communicate when the subject is orinthology -- although not a cross-generation relationship -- presents similar difficulties to Ella just the same.

Although some plots develop in a whacky direction, they resolve themselves well before they reach ridiculously unbelievable levels. The result is a quick book of very human situations and dialouge filled with good solid comedy.

4.0 out of 5 stars A fun read, February 28, 2010

By 

Jana McBurney-Lin "Author, My Half of the Sky" (Los Gatos, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: karlmarx. com: A Love Story (Hardcover)

I've been in search of a book on Marx which doesn't double as a sedative. [...] is just the thing. It's hardly filled with facts, but is a novel paralleling the life of Marx's daughter, Eleanor, with that of a troubled young grad student. I got a smile out of it, and am ready to dive back into the dusty pages of history. Thank you!

0 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars KarlMark.Com is a great title for a very good book!, March 31, 2001

By 

LB Ganek (Bethesda,, MD, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: karlmarx. com: A Love Story (Hardcover)

Put this book on your summer reading list! Author Susan Coll's strength lies in her brilliant dialogue.