Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, 'Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?' and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend-the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. But it's a satire! The whole point is to lighten up.Ī flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy ( The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Also, the ending seems to suggest that the solution is to go back to the idyllic way things used be. Here's a trigger warning, though: Since its relentless mockery of the campus political climate never actually acknowledges the reality of racism and sexual violence, it should not be read by those who lack a sense of humor. This high-spirited, richly imagined, and brave novel is a delight to read. The trouble unfolds in short chapters and articles from the Devon Daily, and, in more ways than one, it all starts with Mark Twain. Among the characters who play a role in his downfall are Lulu, a gorgeous, rich, and utterly cynical Manhattan freshman Red, a seventh-year student not currently enrolled but leading the Progressive Students Alliance and Milton Strauss, the popular 17th president of the university. But the fall semester will bring Eph low. He has a beautiful African American girlfriend named D'Arcy, and he is up for tenure this year-life could not be better. Our hero is Ephraim Russell, a good-looking young white man and professor of English originally from a peanut farm in Alabama who was born to teach 19th-century literature, who 'couldn't imagine a place he'd rather be' than Devon, who has a 4.4 out of 5 on, rare indeed. Johnston's debut skewers life at Devon University in Havenport, a body double for Yale, from the buildings and clubs on campus to the white clam pizza in New Haven, including a nod to the 2015 Halloween-costume dust-up.

Been to college lately? Here it is in all its glory, from the trigger warnings and the bias response teams to the hookups and the hashtags, served with plenty of kombucha and seasonally correct vegan stew.

Campusland by Scott Johnston