PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksVladimir is essentially a work of affair literature. But it is, refreshingly, the story of a woman living out her own fantasies while questions about her husband’s affairs—those that make the news—swirl around her ... Jonas goes to great lengths to evoke the college environment: the offices and classrooms, students and colleagues, libraries and departments. Any reader who has found a home within such spaces may again feel welcome in this world, and the narrator relishes life within the institution ... The plot turns increasingly maximalist, and eventually leads toward peril. For although the narrator’s environment may seem cozy, even quaint, it contains a darker undercurrent ... self-lacerating passages can be draining. They can also sometimes be irritating. But the narrator’s self-criticisms also twist back on themselves, becoming almost playful references to the male authors ... The novel is fascinating not because of its treatment of desire per se, but instead because of its unquestioning acceptance of it—of its capacity to rear its ugly, craving head at any moment of our lives, even long past the time when it is expected to go quietly.
