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An Expensive Education, by Nick McDonell
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Professor Susan Lowell has it made. A happily married mother of two in a tenure-track job at Harvard, she has just won a Pulitzer Prize for her book lionizing Hatashil, an East African freedom fighter. David Ayan is her singular Somali-born student. He is trying to become a member of one of Harvard’s elite finals clubs. He is trying to understand Jane, his girlfriend from a privileged background. He is trying, sometimes, just to get by in a foreign place. Michael Teak is a twenty-five-year-old recent Harvard grad working as an American intelligence operative who meets Hatashil in David’s village minutes before the massacre that will upend all their lives.
Nick McDonell’s third novel takes his readers into Harvard—through its dormitories and dining halls, into its elite finals clubs and lecture halls, and within the offices of its ambitious professors—giving us an incredibly authentic insider’s view of this illustrious university. A powerful portrait of personalities all ensnared in the African conflict and of the Harvard campus on which the debate takes place, An Expensive Education is a smart, relentless novel set at the troubled intersection of ivory academia and realpolitik.
- Sales Rank: #2073630 in Books
- Published on: 2009-08-05
- Format: Deckle Edge
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.10" h x 5.90" w x 8.30" l, 1.00 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 256 pages
From Publishers Weekly
McDonell's third novel, a story of the messy consequences attendant upon a rogue American operation conducted against a Somalian freedom fighter, introduces a spy who could have easily walked off the pages of le Carr�'s better works. An American agent and recent Harvard graduate, Michael Teak has been assigned to deliver money to a band of east African freedom fighters led by local hero Hatashil. But while they're meeting, the village is decimated by a missile strike. Immediately, a mysterious story hits the wire, claiming Hatashil's men massacred the villagers. The news coincides with the Pulitzer Prize being awarded to a Harvard professor, Susan Lowell, whose book celebrates Hatashil. As Teak tries to come to terms with his own apparent expendability, Lowell fights vilification when a video that purportedly shows her pledging to kill for Hatashil surfaces. Meanwhile, an old Agency hand, Alan Green—Harvard alum and godfather to Teak—ties the stories together with his nefarious black world maneuverings. Teak is the most attractive fictional spy in quite some time, and even if the Harvard subplots feel too self-indulgent and insidery, one hopes this isn't Teak's only appearance. (Aug.)
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Critics praised McDonell's third foray into fiction as an engaging mixture of political thriller and campus novel. Even those who found minor faults with its lack of depth and lack of moral ambiguity commended McDonell's vibrant writing and feverish, page-turning pace. Though the plot isn't terribly innovative and the central mystery is quickly solved, Teak's disarming idealism and sulky soul searching—"more Holden Caulfield than James Bond" (New York Times Book Review)—propel the story forward and give it charm. Critics also appreciated McDonell's caustic behind-the-scenes tour of his alma mater and his biting descriptions of its privileged elite. Compared to Graham Greene and John le Carr� for his storytelling skills, McDonell has proved that the third time is the charm.
Review
“McDonell’s third novel . . . introduces a spy who could have easily walked off the pages of le Carr�’s better works . . . Teak is the most attractive fictional spy in quite some time . . . one hopes this isn’t [his] only appearance.” —Publishers Weekly
“Part college novel and part spy thriller in the tradition of Green and le Carr�, An Expensive Education encompasses global, national, and campus politics, showing the way the biggest agendas are sometimes set on the smallest stages. McDonell writes about hot topics with a cool head, and his riveting novel should fuel an emotional response from readers.” —Booklist (starred review)
"McDonell's dark, relentelessly readable latest swings back and forth between Harvard and Africa, and in both cases the education is indeed expensive . . . The 20-something author keeps his smart, ambitious, self-absorbed characters at arm’s-length, doling out understanding and compassion to them while withholding real affection. A novel for the head more than the heart, but so very intelligent that for a certain kind of reader it will be catnip.” —Kirkus (starred review)
“McDonell continues his streak with a suspenseful, Graham Greene–inspired third effort . . . it's clear this young writer has only begun to show where his prodigious storytelling will take us.” —People
“An Expensive Education blends a terse story of international intrigue with a biting satire of Harvard . . . Smart and sexy and could be the beginning of a franchise more lucrative than literary fiction.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post
“For decades, the intersection of the Ivy League and the CIA has made for good storytelling. But most of these are august tales of the Cold War, told from the wise, occasionally stuffy viewpoint of an old master. Now the 25-year-old McDonell — who burst onto the literary scene at 17 with his novel Twelve — has enlivened the genre with An Expensive Education . . . Tempered by some hilarious insider glimpses of Harvard life, An Expensive Education is terrific, a thriller noir that's difficult to put down or forget." —Entertainment Weekly (A-)
“At twenty-five, McDonell is delivering on his literary promise. An Expensive Education is an adult novel, albeit not too grown-up. There are nods to Graham Greene, but the book struck me as more like what an early Bret Easton Ellis novel might be like if Ellis believed in plots. . . . McDonell has mastered the mechanics of genre without losing his literary hipness.” —The Oregonian
“Unerringly entertaining . . . McDonell skips from Washington to Nairobi as easily as he crosses the river between Cambridge and Boston, usually by means of short chapters and skillful cuts. . . . [His protagonist Teak] is more Holden Caulfield than James Bond: the spy in quarterlife crisis. And it’s the juxtaposition of his cold-blooded training and soulful moping that gives the book its charm.” —The New York Times Book Review
Most helpful customer reviews
31 of 34 people found the following review helpful.
A screenplay disguised as a book.
By Hubcap
It's not terrible, but An Expensive Education doesn't deserve the hype it's been getting. It has characters, but no real characterization. Every person in the book speaks in the same voice, and it's the voice of a male Harvard graduate in his mid-twenties who grew up in a world of privilege. McDonell relies on brand names (Prada, Louboutin) and band names (Genghis Tron - twice! They must be friends...) to provide personalities for his characters; a lazy trick that might be acceptable for a screenplay but is weak in a book. I'm sure An Expensive Education has been optioned to Hollywood already. With actual actors to flesh out the weak character sketches, it might even make a pretty good movie. But as a book, I'd pass.
The plot itself is fine, and it is a quick read. But don't be fooled; this is not a book about Africa but rather a book about Harvard people vying for status via Africa. In theory the plot revolves around a massacre an African village, but the key dramatic hinge is really, "will the professor's Pulitzer Prize be revoked?" I'm not sure why I should care about that. But it does give you an idea of where the author's head is at. If you've ever spent a sleepless night worried about YOUR Pulitzer Prize being revoked, I'm sure you will find this book riveting. Me...not so much.
As for the breathy comparisons to Graham Greene, we've all said things we wish we hadn't and I'm sure those reviewers will regret it in the morning.
22 of 27 people found the following review helpful.
An Expensive Education is Great, but Experience is Priceless
By J. A. Walsh
I have not read Nick McDonell's much-ballyhooed novel "Twelve," which he wrote as a mere 17-year old. But, having read "An Expensive Education," an espionage thriller he submits at the tender age of 25, my guess is that he was better served by the more familiar environment of Manhattan's upper crust adolescent playrgrounds.
"An Expensive Education" makes all the right noises. It feels like LeCarre - to continue a debate undertaken by two other reviews - in all the familiar places, but its hollow. McDonell goes through the motions of mystery, of relationships, of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, and professional politics.
The artifice is particularly glaring when McDonnel tries to write his female protagonist, Harvard professor and Pulitzer winner Susan Lowell, a character he writes with a sexuality that feels forced and formulaic. Where McDonell does hit on all cylinders is right in the dorm rooms and campus coffee klatches of Harvard.
Writing David - his African ex-pat - McDonell's voice finds an artful and authentic angst, longing, and inner conflict: brilliance and ambition clashing with insecurity and fear. His Harvard CIA man, Teak, is too much of a stretch for McDonnel as he troops through international intrigue on Africa's horn, and he becomes more a lens for the plot than a character in his own right.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Unrealized potential
By Matthew Pinzur
An Expensive Education is more than the sum of its parts, which is fortunate but makes it difficult to write a review that reflects its nature. For an author whose talent was lauded at a very early age, the writing is sometimes painfully immature. He is overly expository in early going, especially when he rushes to introduce every aspect of a character upon their first appearance. The plot - a 21st-century twist on the 70s-cinema themes of political subterfuge, double-cross and nesting dolls of suspicion - is ripe for a more involved treatment than it actually receives. The characters, of which there are just a few too many, are usually little more than tools to advance the plot around three major players: a painfully unlikable caricature of a precious Harvard newspaper writer and aspiring intellectual, her African-born boyfriend who is self-aware yet still itching to assimilate, and a CIA operative whose conscience belies his mission. Of those, only David - the boyfriend, a stranger in a strange land that he years to adopt - has any measurable complexity.
Nonetheless, this story compels. In an industry overwhelmed by kiddie vampire novels, ham-fisted Brownian adventure tales and disposable serial-killer mysteries, An Expensive Education dares to raise social, political and personal questions in the context of a page-turning thriller. You're unlikely to put it down midstream, but equally unlikely to feel satisfied when it's over. Ultimately, its great shame is its vast unrealized potential - McDonell has barely scratched the surface of his own creative notions and raises a most interesting literary questions: is he bumping against the limitations of his own talent, or afraid to tread in the places where noir pulp evolves into something more interesting?
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