Ian McGuire Release Date: 01 Mar 2007 Format: Paperback Pages: 384 ISBN: 9780747585824 ISBN-10: 0747585822
Coketown University, also known as the 'plughole of England', is where thirty-something Morris Gutman has achieved the mighty heights of temporary lecturer. He's temporary in other ways too - chronically indecisive, easily distracted and barely awake most of the time. Life didn't turn out as he planned it when he was a bright young thing: he has a wife who hates her job, a demanding insomniac child and teaches courses like 'Misogyny and the Novel' to ungrateful English students.
Morris is hoping to negotiate a permanent department job from under the noses of smarter and better candidates by being obsequious, cheap and willing to do anything. Unfortunately he has to forge his way through the minefield of waffle and back-biting that is academia and most importantly to win over the driven and dangerous Zoe Cable, a sexually voracious research fellow who tends to ignore Morris. She has been focussing her attentions on Dirck van Camper, smug Euro-student and stepson of a famous uber-theorist. So when Morris accidentally runs into Dirck in a dark car-park - literally - he finds himself being thrown into Zoe's game, even though he's not too sure of the rules.
In this sordid and hilarious tale of whopping academic grants, sleeping on the job, sexual confusion and consenting adults, terrifying departmental secretaries, surprise impregnations and alcoholic lecturers we might conclude that most people are just not cut out for university life.
Alienation and adultery, Pampers and plagiarism, and lashings of sex and satire in a brilliantly funny first novel.
