A crater blossomed in the night right beside the building. Which is what prevented her from parking in her regular space. Part of the parking lot, the traffic circle, the walkway in front of the door on this backside of the building, have collapsed into a giant hole. Part of the concrete foundation of Crawley Hall exposed. Its root. She flushed with embarrassment; seeing the raw foundation feels like accidentally seeing an ancient uncle's naked buttocks.I was prompted to read Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall by the rear cover blurb that describes it as “an unholy collision of Stoner, The Haunting of Hill House, Charlie Brown, and Alice in Wonderland”; how intriguing is that? Now that I've finished it, I have to admit that it delivers both more and less than advertised – more weird than spooky, this book is a satirical look at academia, as seen through the eyes of a lovable loser. It's an easy and compelling read – you never anticipate what's coming next – and while the language doesn't exactly sing, it has a creepy and ironic atmosphere that fully engages the mind. Even so, that list of books that DEVatHoCH invokes on its rear cover are some true heavyweights of English Literature, and by comparison, this comes up light. Still a worthwhile read.
As it begins, we meet Dr. Edith Vance; our lovable loser. While the book never divulges her age, we know that it took her eleven years to get her PhD in English Lit; that she now suffers hot flashes while still paying back her student loans. The kind of woman who doesn't even know how to properly dress herself, Edith decides to take the advice of her new phone therapist and make the upcoming school year her year – and why shouldn't it be? Edith has a sexy new girlfriend, has bought the same shoes with hourglass heels that the other women profs wear, and her first book – on Beulah Crump-Withers: “former sporting girl, then housewife, prairie poet, maven memoirist, and all-round African-Canadian literary genius” – is about to be published. And best of all, becoming published means that for the first time in her teaching career at (the fictional) University of Inivea, she will have enough points on her self-evaluation forms to satisfy the tough new Dean; a nightmare administrator who thinks that the primary duties of his professors are to publish in topflight journals and attract grant money.
But when September rolls around, Edith's optimism is short-lived: Her new students, just like her old students, only take her course as a mandatory part of their pre-med or pre-law degrees (when all Edith ever wanted from her career was to share her love of books with other wide-eyed bibliophiles); her former doctoral advisor (who had eventually turned on Edith and attempted to scuttle her dissertation) has been brought into her department as a visiting Chair; and the Humanities building – Crawley Hall – seems to be falling apart: maggots drop from the ceiling tiles, elevators get stuck between floors, and yellow-eyed hares bound from dark corners.
As a satirical look at academia, this book feels truthful – every funny-but-sad thing that happens (the cocktail receptions with donors, the backstabbing and credit-stealing, the business schools getting new branded buildings while the Humanities' literally crumbles apart) is funnier-but-sadder because it seems all too plausible. Edith's friend Coral – a feminist Sociology prof who drinks from a cup emblazoned with the words “Male Tears” – shares an office with three other profs; their varying office hours taped to the door in between photocopied cartoons about grammar and climate change. When Coral tries to start a protest about their “sick building”, Edith keeps her head low: she might have tenure, but the new Dean has the power to “refresh” her right out of a job.
I liked all of the Canadiana that author Suzette Mayr layers into this book – name-dropping The Friendly Giant, people sit on chesterfields and drive on the Queen Elizabeth highway – and loved that Edith's book on (the fictional) Beulah Crump-Withers was called Taber Corn Follies (I have lived in Lethbridge and eaten my share of Taber corn). I don't know that the weirdness going on at Crawley Hall really went far enough (I guess I was looking for more Haunting of Hill House), but this article on Mayr gives her the space to explain her process:
I grew up in Calgary in the 1970s, and there weren’t very many other black people. I was a bi-racial person and that was even more confusing for people around me. Then I became queer. I have kind of a complicated subject position. How do you write about that when there’s no language for that? Going into the magic, going into the supernatural, pushing language and metaphor into the literal, and suddenly there is room to write that experience if I go beyond the bounds of reality. Because then I can explain it.Again, as enjoyable as I found this book, it's not a literary heavyweight. Taken on its own terms, there was much I liked and the four stars reflect its ranking against similar works.
