Review

"Delightful...a witty dance with the ghost of Nabokov and a razor-edged commentary on academia at our current fraught moment...by turns, cathartic, devious and terrifically entertaining." -Jean Hanff Korelitz, The New York Times "A virtuoso debut...our unnamed narrator [is] so witty, sharp and seductive that, as a reader, I was pretty much putty in her hands." -Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air "Vladimir goes into such outrageous territory that my jaw literally dropped at moments while I was reading it. There's a rare blend here of depth of character, mesmerizing prose, and fast-paced action." -Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe "Jonas, with a potent, pumping voice, has drawn a character so powerfully candid that when she does things that are malicious, dangerous and, yes, predatory, we only want her to do them again." -Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times "A deliciously dark fable of sex and power... Earmark an entire afternoon to devour this propulsive story of obsession, scandal, and transgressive desire." -Esquire If Netflix's The Chair, Lisa Taddeo's best-seller Three Women, and the most compelling passages of Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands had a love child (just go with me here), it would be this fiction debut. With a title character who's a sought-after young novelist new to a college faculty, Vladimir leaves the reader with more questions than answers-about sex, and sexual politics-in the most delicious way. -Entertainment Weekly "Jonas's narrator is a work of art in herself." -The Washington Post "Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny." -People (Book of the Week) "[Vladimir] soldiers into charged territory... with an unreliable and at times almost defiantly unlikable narrator at the helm. This woman is no joke. She's ravenous-for rich and indulgent meals, big sloshing glasses of wine and sneaked cigarettes... In taking this older woman's desire deadly seriously, Vladimir proves seductively subversive." -USA Today "Funny, wise and instantly engaging, Vladimir is how I like my thrill rides: brainy and sexy." -Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go Bernadette "Outrageously fun... Jonas unravels a taut and bold narrative about power, ambition, and female desire." -Time

Review Quote

"Delightful...a witty dance with the ghost of Nabokov and a razor-edged commentary on academia at our current fraught moment...by turns, cathartic, devious and terrifically entertaining." -- Jean Hanff Korelitz, The New York Times "A virtuoso debut...our unnamed narrator [is] so witty, sharp and seductive that, as a reader, I was pretty much putty in her hands." --Maureen Corrigan , Fresh Air " Vladimir goes into such outrageous territory that my jaw literally dropped at moments while I was reading it. There's a rare blend here of depth of character, mesmerizing prose, and fast-paced action." -- Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe "Jonas, with a potent, pumping voice, has drawn a character so powerfully candid that when she does things that are malicious, dangerous and, yes, predatory, we only want her to do them again." --Jessica Ferri, Los Angeles Times "A deliciously dark fable of sex and power... Earmark an entire afternoon to devour this propulsive story of obsession, scandal, and transgressive desire." -- Esquire If Netflix's The Chair , Lisa Taddeo's best-seller Three Women , and the most compelling passages of Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands had a love child (just go with me here), it would be this fiction debut. With a title character who's a sought-after young novelist new to a college faculty, Vladimir leaves the reader with more questions than answers--about sex, and sexual politics--in the most delicious way. -- Entertainment Weekly "Jonas's narrator is a work of art in herself." -- The Washington Post "Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny." -- People (Book of the Week) "[ Vladimir ] soldiers into charged territory... with an unreliable and at times almost defiantly unlikable narrator at the helm. This woman is no joke. She's ravenous--for rich and indulgent meals, big sloshing glasses of wine and sneaked cigarettes... In taking this older woman's desire deadly seriously, Vladimir proves seductively subversive." -- USA Today "Funny, wise and instantly engaging, Vladimir is how I like my thrill rides: brainy and sexy." --Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go Bernadette "Outrageously fun... Jonas unravels a taut and bold narrative about power, ambition, and female desire." -- Time

Excerpt from Book

Chapter I I. Although I had seen and heard Vladimir speak during the master class, the candidates luncheon, and the faculty retreat, I had not had the chance to say more than a few words directly to him until the fall semester. When I first met him, in the spring after he''d been hired as a full-time junior professor, I was coming late to and leaving early from all full-faculty events to avoid having to talk with any of my colleagues. Even sitting three chairs away from Florence was almost too much for me to bear--lightning bolts of anger shot from my vagina to my extremities. I''ve always felt the origin of anger in my vagina and am surprised it is not mentioned more in literature. On an early September evening, the first week of the semester, he visited me at my home, and that is when we had our first real conversation. I was enjoying the cool breeze in the sitting room of our town house, drinking mineral water--my rule is that if I am alone I do not drink alcohol until 9 p.m. (a practical tactic to keep my weight down)--and reading a history of witches in America, when he rang the bell. Since the allegations had been brought against my husband, I felt unable to read fiction. Usually I eagerly set about a reading project each summer to find at least one or two new short stories or novel excerpts to read with my classes. It was important for them and me to always keep acquainted with the contemporary voice. This summer, however, my eyes felt as though they could not focus on the words. The invented worlds, all the made-up-ness and stolen-ness of fiction, all the characters--they felt like a meager and pitiful offering. I needed dates, facts, numbers, and statistics. Weapons. This is our world and this is what happened in it. In the first class of my survey courses I was accustomed to reading a section of Poetics aloud. In it Aristotle discusses the difference between history and poetry and why poetry, being crafted and theoretical, is a superior representation of humanity. This year I skipped it. This year I skipped my whole introductory lecture--usually a litany of references and quotations that I prepped and practiced for well in advance--designed to cow and delight my students. This year, instead, I asked them to speak about themselves and their experiences. While I wish I could say that this decision came from a desire to get to know them, it did not. On my notes for the class I wrote: "Have them talk! (They''re only interested in what they think, anyway.)" I heard a car pull into the drive, and then listened for a while as someone paced around the property, wondering which door to approach. In our town, there''s a general custom of entering through the back porch, which, if the house has not been completely remodeled, opens to the kitchen, from a time when in-house help was more prevalent, and domestic labor less of a performance displaying taste, choice, and skill. Vladimir, however, being new, rang the entrance at the front of the house--which opened to a cold little corridor that we used only as a pass-through to the upstairs. When I opened the door he stood spotlit by the porch light, and immediately put his free hand in his pocket, as though he had been adjusting his hair. He seemed abashed. I remembered my thirties, as a young mother, meeting young fathers, talking about where their sons or daughters were going to elementary school, or whether they were going to try out karate, and how thrilled it made me to see them adjusting their hair or clothing subconsciously: a nervous nod to the powers of attraction I possessed at the time. He held a bottle of red wine in his other hand and a book tucked into his armpit. When I opened the door he awkwardly switched the two--moving the wine underneath his opposite arm, so it lay against his side like a violin at rest. He wore a knit tie with an engraved tie bar over a checked shirt with rolled-up sleeves, well-cut pants, and good-quality leather boots with thick white soles. Clearly a transplant from the city--no heterosexual man who''d spent much time here would look like that. Even my husband, a vain man with a taste for expensive Irish knit sweaters, had forgotten the specificity and light irony of urban style. My husband wore what he wore because he believed in it--he had lost the sense of costuming and presentation that well-dressed city dwellers naturally possessed. That perambulating sense of always being on display. Vladimir held out the slim book, chalkboard green with sans serif lettering. "I was going to say I was in the neighborhood but I wasn''t--I came from the college--I wanted to give--John and I had spoken earlier--I wanted to bring him--and you, you --this. "And this," he said, holding up the wine. "I wouldn''t presume that bringing only my book was enough to justify a visit." I ignored the wine and put on my act of matronly fandom that these days I used more and more with my students and the young people around me. My Big Mom Energy, as they say. " negligible generalities by Vladimir Vladinski," I read. "Your book. I''m so excited, please come in." After some negotiation with the clunky door that involved his tie being caught, he followed me into the sitting room. As I led him though the corridor, I grabbed a pashmina to wrap around my neck. I prefer to conceal my neck. "John is out, actually, but can I invite you to have a drink with me? Since you weren''t in the neighborhood?" He agreed after looking at his watch, a gesture to let me know his time was limited. "Come with me to the kitchen. You can have your wine or beer or a martini." I am naturally a busy host, and I like busy hosts, though some do not. When someone comes into my house, for a good portion of time I do not stop moving--tidying, making coffee, cleaning. My mother never sat still unless she was reading, typing, paying bills, or asleep, and I share this quality. When I go into someone''s house and they are doing many chores, and their attention is divided, and they are packing a suitcase or mopping their floors while I linger about, I feel distinctly at ease. I have always liked the feeling of hanging around, and a host who gives me too much of their attention makes me feel unnerved. When I had a little affair, back in the city, when I was an all-but-dissertation TA, it was with a very slow-moving young man who made intense and lasting eye contact. He was in my section of the Women in Literature seminar, and his gaze upon me, when he would offer a thought about Woolf or Eliot or Aphra Behn, felt so penetrating and impertinent I didn''t know how to take it. I thought it was funny at the beginning, a kind of affectation. As he spent more and more time in my office I became addicted to the eye contact and would try to blink as slowly as possible when we were speaking, so that I could get a sense of leaving and coming back to that warm bath of his ocular attention. When we finally consummated our flirtation, I was devastated to find (though I shouldn''t have been surprised) that he could not maintain this communication while making love and turned as screwed-eyed and internal as any other twenty-one-year-old boy. (Lest you be too horrified, I was only twenty-eight.) Once the affair dissolved, I started to find his eye contact irritating, then enraging, and finally simply cow-eyed and insipid. I had to move through all these points of perception. He is "in business" now, and Republican, I think. "I mean, a martini, now, why not," said Vladimir, sounding titillated by the prospect. "I make them with vodka so you know. They are suburban martinis. Dirty, and wet, with lots of olive juice and vermouth." He assured me that was fine, lovely, how he liked them. I opened the bottom cupboard to stand on its ledge so I could reach the glasses on a higher shelf. I am a short woman. This anatomical fact feels at odds with my personality. All my adult life, people, when they find out my height, marvel that I am only five foot three inches tall. They think me to be at least five foot six or even seven. In pictures I am often surprised to see how little I am in comparison to my husband. In my mind, he and I are the same. I pulled the glasses out of the cupboard. I felt as though Vladimir was standing very close to me, and in fact, when I turned around to hand him the glasses I almost placed them on his chest. "Sorry," we both said. "Jinx," I said. When the drinks were fixed, I led him out to the living room. He sat on the loveseat across from me and spread out in an appealingly masculine way, with a big, wide cross of one leg over the other, ankle to knee. He told me that he had a young child at home, three years old (Philomena, but they called her Phee), and that his wife (a person of great fascination to the department who would be teaching a memoir-writing class for us, a beautiful woman I had seen at faculty events but not yet spoken to) was not adjusting well to the change to the country from the city. He asked where my husband was and seemed surprised when I told him that he was out getting a drink with a former student. "A student?" I clarified that it was a male student, which relaxed him. My husband, John, is the chair of our small English Department in our small upstate New York college, population less than 2,200 students. At the start of the spring semester (last January), our department was handed a petition, with more than three hundred signatures, requesting his removal. Attached to the petition were affidavits by seven women, now of various ages, former students at the college, who, over the course of his twenty-eight years of teaching here, had engaged with

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