My Last Innocent Year: A Novel

This book resembles other books similar in the subject of a college girl falling for a professor.But, this book is seamlessly written with interesting characters and a likable narrator. I loved all my school years, and I also was a teacher for a while, and ai find myself drawn to books about the academic life. There's a lot to like here..

The book was really great. Good story, the caracters where really authentic. The prologue of the book really touched me, shocked me even.As for the subjects surrending de story and the time: Like rape and woman rights ( and much more) I felt like it did not go far enough!!As for the rest, its a great book to read, could not pu it down.

I did not expect to like this book as much as I did. But I found it well written. I found within it a couple of lines that took my breath away. Excellent book.

"My Last Innocent Year" , for me, more like "my last baby year". I was worried that I wouldn't hit my three-book-a-month velocity cause I am really distracted right now. Work, social life....re-doing the electrical on my house and then renting a house on the cape but the house had no internet (not so magical!)... also let my MFA application slip a little, but I have set a new goal for myself on that for my Birthday, next month. But really I read this book around the same time child #3 turned 1, and it was a nice point in time. I returned to my pre-baby (though not prechlomid/letrozole) weight, and I got rid of a bunch of ...clothes I owned because I was trying to get pregnant or pregnant or nursing or baby poop for the last 7 years.  There went my 20s, and some of my 30s!I bring this all up because at the end of the book, our narrator reframes the whole story as a pivotal moment in her life, while she looks back. I really liked it, until I realized she snuck in a bunch of #metoo stuff. Don't get me wrong, reading the first 90% of the novel, I was sure Connelly was a creep-o preying on co-eds, but I didn't need to get it spelled out for me in the end like this. I'm kinda tired of social-movements-as-tropes. I agree that it was a worthwhile movement, and there are issues out there, but again I prefer more subtly.  So in 2024 good-bye-to-all-that (My Dark Vanessa, Three Women, Trust Exercise).I really liked this novel. I love Northeast-dark/humor-academia, I love jew-out-of-place, I even love divorce-thriller. I found a little bit of comfort the times Isabel talked about her parents, especially her dad. While I didn't grow up the child of an appetizing store owner, my family was from a very working-class enclave out in Canarsie, so I really understood his mentality and the things he would say. It made me really miss my own father and Grandfather, although I think they would say: innocence would be something that happens in our soul in the womb. Birth is suffering and is the immediate starting line for a lifetime of misdeed and guilt. 5 stars despite my nitpicking, it was well constructed and enjoyable.

I am not sure why this book was written. The characters were not interesting. Nothing really happened. The author was trying discuss current topics,but it fell short.