An underwhelming kidnapping
By the looks of it, Julia May Jonas's debut novel should hold more power than it does. The cover sports a man in a fashionable green jacket with Vladimir emblazoned over his bare-chest in a chic, IG-friendly font. There is the promise of deviance, of worthwhile shock, of naughtiness. Unfortunately, the book provides none of these. Julia May Jonas's prose, though at times showing flashes of superb phrasing, is flat and underwhelming. Her story is predictable. It lacks any urge to rise above the mediocrities of a work-shopped plot.
Vladimir is about an English Professor who lusts after her young, new co-worker Vladimir, going as far as to plot a kidnapping to have him for herself. In her 50s now, she is saddled with John, her philandering husband in an open relationship, who, too, works at the same university. John is currently suspended from teaching so the university can investigate him for having affairs with his students. He and his wife have a daughter who clearly has commitment issues and, over the course of the novel, returns home to recuperate from cheating on her girlfriend.
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Perhaps the book's biggest fault is that it ends up being (unintentionally or not) a response to Nabokov's Lolita. One should have no problem with novels that subvert or flip an already existing piece of art, more so when the art in question is ever controversial and still popular. But to be successful at this exercise, the work must match the intensity of its target. And here is where Vladimir fails—it is mild. As the new professor who arrives in their town to make a fresh start with his wife Cynthia, he is a sanitised portrait of the good, worrying husband. Cynthia, who has her own issues, clearly finds him to be an interesting object. At one point in the book, the narrator even notices this: "One of the reasons she was with him was that she found him sexy. He wasn't a mentor, he was a prize."
The best parts of the novels are some of Julia May Jonas's descriptions of her narrator cooking; this is where the character comes alive, when she stops all the complaining about her age and takes charge of diffusing her class's disputes regarding her alleged silent support for her husband's misdeeds. At times, the author would add in a word in a sentence that would elevate it from an average line into a memorable one. For instance, instead of merely saying "wife", she writes in the beginning pages: "Vladimir snores lightly, a soft, soothing purr of a snore. It's a sweet, even sound. If I lived with him, if I were his little wife, I would wrap myself around him and let that snore lull me to sleep, like the sound of a rushing ocean."
The simple insertion of "little" changes the entire mood of the paragraph. A generic fantasy is given dimension.
The upshot of the novel, however, is supposed to be the "transgressive" kidnapping attempt, but that only acts as a sign for things to start failing with good measure. Nothing that follows redeems the contents of the book. May Jonas sets up so much "obsession" only for her narrator to not have any idea where to direct this. As if deliberately, nothing is taken to its extremes. All threads of the novel are left choked to a middling end. Finishing the book, one comes away from it disappointed, hungry, and ultimately indifferent.
Shahriar Shaams has written for Dhaka Tribune, The Business Standard and The Daily Star. He is nonfiction editor at Clinch, a martial-arts themed literary journal. Find him on twitter @shahriarshaams.
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