PositiveThe Los Angeles TimesHappily, [Holsinger] remains a master of clever plots and suspense. The result is a rare sort of book, a domestic drama with the pace of a whodunit ... They lie, cheat and sabotage one another. Holsinger deftly manages all their plots and schemes, showing how each character’s fate influences the others ... The novel is full of dark and funny moments. At the same time, it’s not exactly news that the upper middle class is full of hypocrites, in Crystal or elsewhere. Novelists have been skewering the bourgeoisie since there have been bourgeoisie to skewer. The best of them unearth the all-too-relatable hopes and fears beneath the bad behavior...Holsinger is better at satirizing his characters than baring their souls ... Perhaps because the novel is so complicated and fast-paced, it never goes too deeply into how the characters feel or why. In the climactic scene, a disastrous open house at the gifted school, all the threads of Holsinger’s plot come together, even as Rose and her friends’ lives fall apart. In this moment it’s easier to admire Holsinger’s ingenuity than feel his characters’ pain ... Still, on occasion, one will have a flash of insight.
Julie Schumacher
MixedThe Los Angeles TimesThe novel isn’t quite as funny as its predecessor; it might be if it weren’t so plausible. In a case of life imitating art, the conservative activist Charlie Kirk recently suggested that Stanford no longer offers courses on Shakespeare. (It does). Even liberals these days gasp at campus \'political correctness,\' which is supposedly turning their children into Maoists. Everyone seems ready to believe the worst about higher education. In this context, some of Schumacher’s characterizations—like the feminist who rants about \'phallocentric hegemony and the necessary demise of the Anthropocene\'—border on ugly stereotypes, or worse, clichés. Of course, satirists have always exaggerated for effect, and they are under no obligation to be nice. But the best satire often comes from a place of wounded idealism ... Does The Shakespeare Requirement hint at what’s important to Schumacher? ... Schumacher’s satire turns out to be a sneaky apology for her and Fitger’s profession. And she’s right. No matter how exasperating life on campus becomes, for those who want to live within books and through them, it’s still the place to be.
