In her debut novel, Vladimir, playwright Julia May Jonas turns her eye to shifting social mores and the tensions they cause between different social groups by employing a classic trope: the affair (both intermarital and intergenerational) on the college campus.
Publishers Weekly called Vladimir “a mordantly funny post-#MeToo campus story about a 50-something woman unhinged by desire for a younger man.” The book, released earlier this month from Avid Reader, finds its unnamed narrator attempting to come to grips with both her lust for a talented new colleague and increasing scrutiny on her own actions from colleagues and students alike, as her husband, who is also the head of their department, is under investigation after being accused of sexual predation by a number of former students.
The result is a page-turner blending romance with social observation that speaks to issues of consent, desire, and trauma in an era in which generational and political divides both on and off campus seem to be ever-widening.
spoke with Jonas about the campus novel as social novel,
