Staff Pick
Prose writes a scathing tale that encompasses so many aspects of life, it's kind of hard to believe. It's a pleasure to watch her set fire to the entirety of academia, political correctness, sexual harassment, the ignorance of youth, infidelity, the funk of mediocrity, and the midlife crisis. A perfect gem, Prose absolutely nails this modern-day tragicomedy. Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
It has been years since Swenson, a professor of creative writing at a small New England college, has published a novel of his own. It's been even longer since a student of his has shown a glimmer of talent. And academia, with its increasingly stifling politically correct environment, isn't what it used to be. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare gift for writing. Fearless and ambitious, Angela seems like the answer to Swenson's prayers. Better yet, she wants his help. What could be more perfect? However, as experience shows, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
A sublime stylist and satirist, Francine Prose is one of the treasures of contemporary literature. No one writes more wisely about love and marriage, or about the many forms of seduction: the seduction of youth, Of fame, of literary success. Blue Angel is also a withering take on modern academic mores, a scathing tale of colliding cultures that vividly shows just what can happen when academic politics crashes head-on into political correctness -- and to the innocent (or not-so-innocent) men and women caught in the wreckage.
Blue Angel is that rarest of gems: a novel that is a delight and a pleasure to read, a comic tour de force by one of our most inspired and gifted writers. Blue Angel does for creative writing programs what Upton Sinclair's The Jungle did for the meat-packing industry.
Review
"Blue Angel is a smart-bomb attack on academic hypocrisy and cant,
and Francine Prose, an equal-opportunity offender, is as politically incorrect
on the subject of sex as Catullus and twice as funny. What a deep relief it
is, in these dumbed-down Late Empire days, to read a world class satirist who's
also a world class story-teller." Russell Banks
Review
"Francine Prose has been steadily producing novels, short stories, and criticism shot through with corrosive wit and searing intelligence, and Blue Angel represents a high-water mark in her estimable career. This is a gorgeous novel, the literary life laid bare in the tradition of George Gissing and John Updike, academe presented with the lofty compassion that Randall Jarrell brought to Pictures From an Institution, and a comedy of sexual manners that not only had me laughing out loud, but reading with suspense." Scott Spencer
Review
"Part Orwell, part Crucible, Blue Angel is a darkly funny look at the paranoid star-chamber world of sexual correctness in the American university system Dobie Gillis plunged into Dante's Inferno. Against a backdrop of tenure-clutching terror, Francine Prose is once again the great defender of the all-too-human: the weak-willed, the inconsistent, the hungry-hearted and all other sinners caught between their own personal demons and the mandates of our increasingly Puritanical culture. A defiant and compassionate novel by a great writer." Richard Price, Lingua Franca
Review
"There is a way of getting inside your characters that renders them intimately known and comprehensively exposed at once privileged and gutted and Francine Prose is very good at it...Once you start reading it, you'll be hooked." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Prose (Guided Tours of Hell..., 1997, etc.) returns with a characteristically sly and biting send-up of academia and the political correctness that plagues our days....Her Swensen is not exactly likable, but in his bumbling self-destruction, he becomes lovable. What happens when a more-or-less moral, not particularly demanding, average-ly self-involved, middle-aged man crashes headlong into both academic politics and political correctness? When Prose is doing the imagining, you can count on nodding in recognition while howling with laughter. An academic comedy of manners as engaging as Richard Russo's Straight Man: Prose once again proves herself one of our great cultural satirists." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"When Prose is doing the imagining, you can count on nodding in recognition
while howling with laughter. An academic comedy of manners as engaging as Richard
Russo's Straight Man: Prose once again proves herself one of our great
cultural satirists." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"A peerlessly accomplished performance, at once tingingly contemporary
and timelessly funny." Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
The National Book Award Finalist from acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Francine Prose--now the major motion picture Submission
"Screamingly funny ... Blue Angel culminates in a sexual harassment hearing that rivals the Salem witch trials." --USA Today
It's been years since Swenson, a professor in a New England creative writing program, has published a novel. It's been even longer since any of his students have shown promise. Enter Angela Argo, a pierced, tattooed student with a rare talent for writing. Angela is just the thing Swenson needs. And, better yet, she wants his help. But, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions...
Deliciously risque, Blue Angel is a withering take on today's academic mores and a scathing tale that vividly shows what can happen when academic politics collides with political correctness.
About the Author
Francine Prose is the critically acclaimed author of nineteen novels, including the National Book Award Finalist Blue Angel and My New American Life. She has written three other novels for young adults: After, winner of the California Young Reader Medal, an IRA/CBC Young Adults' Choice, and a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age; Bullyville, a PW Best Book and Book Sense Children's Pick; and her most recent, Touch. She is also the author of two picture books, Leopold, the Liar of Leipzig and Rhino, Rhino, Sweet Potato. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, Francine Prose was Director's Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in New York City.