FALL SEMESTER

A novel about an affair between a student and a professor and how both choose to cope with love and loss.

At the start of Fournet’s debut novel, 34-year-old Malcolm Vashal, a professor of Central and South American literature at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is morbidly depressed. He hasn’t written or published in years, his marriage to his wife, J.J., has recently ended, and he feels miserable teaching at the university. In fact, his depression has gotten so bad that he’s obtained a handgun and is considering suicide. Everything starts to change, however, when he meets 24-year-old Maren Gardner, an alluring new graduate student who’s transferred in from Denver in order to be closer to her dying father. It doesn’t take long before Malcolm and Maren realize that they have a crush on each other. Both carefully navigate how to handle their developing relationship, as well as how to balance it with the other happenings in their lives. Overall, this is a lovely read. Although it grapples with death, depression and heartbreak, it’s also a heartwarming, hopeful romantic story that highlights the unmistakable power of love. The author creates a vivid, believable environment, including very specific details about the university’s English department (Maren takes “St. Martin and MacIntosh’s poetry workshop, Russo’s transcendentalists class, and Dr. Sheridan’s Romantics seminar”), the people involved in it and the places they frequent. The novel’s only major weak point is its occasionally old-fashioned language, particularly in its sex scenes (“He circled a finger over her pubic bone before dipping it into her sex”), which feels awkward in the otherwise tightly written narrative.

An often endearing love story, much like those in Hollywood’s best rom-coms.