Vanity has always been my poorest quality. I hate it in myself, and yet am as plagued with it as I am with needing to sleep or eat or breathe.
The most noticeable thing when going into Vladimir by Julia May Jonas is its cover. The titular and attractive Vladimir, a faceless man, sitting with the open, lazy stance that he has. Next are the blurbs that decorate that picture. My cover edition, specifically, describes the book as “sexy.” Having read the novel, both of these things seem somewhat misleading. The book is neither about a man named Vladimir nor is it remarkably sexually explicit. This book is of a much rarer variety, starting with the demographics of the main character.
Our narrator is a nameless, 50-something English professor whose husband, also a board member of the university, is being investigated for past inappropriate relationships with former students. Already, this novel dives headfirst into the theme of sexual politics. At the same time, the narrator meets Vladimir Vladinsky, a 40-something celebrated new experimental novelist and colleague. She is instantly obsessed with him, yet her obsession only reminds her of her percieved loss of sexual power, amplified by her age and their differences in generations. We see her driving herself to drunkenness and a frenzied sort of craze the more she desires him. Her husband, even in their extraordinarily open-dating relationship, finds himself irked by her almost overnight change.
Our narrator becomes malignantly immoral and predatory. Yet, her actions are portrayed with such a candid, satirical voice that, to the reader, they seem indulgent. This voice is further propelled by the novel’s character-driven style. Julia May Jonas’ flair for such caricature-like characters highlights her background as a playwright. While the spotlight is constantly placed on our narrator and her thought processes, regardless of whether there is a so-called “plot” or not, each character is distinct in their characterization and their collection of problems. It’s a roulette of mental health problems, if you will. All of these aspects combine to create the darkly droll yet striking gem that is Vladimir.
Needless to say, this novel was captivating. While the ending may catch some readers off guard and, frankly, in disappointment, I considered it to be the novel’s final wisp of irony and satire. Whatever happened to the narrator, after all, felt like one sharp plot device after another, done to explore a powerful, self-indulgent emotion rather than to tell a story in its traditional sense. The effect of this is electrifying, bordering on the fetishization of achieving such an emotional high.
~5 stars.
