Through Sam’s eyes, she exposes the absurd hierarchies and quiet humiliations of academic life with biting wit and emotional precision. Both a campus novel and a social reckoning, The Adjunct holds up an unflinching mirror to the systems that exploit passion in the name of prestige.
Adelmann's novel is the frank, sometimes darkly funny story of one of those teachers navigating the many challenges of her complicated personal life while struggling to survive in a system that seems engineered to ensure her failure.
The harsh realities of Sam’s exploitation by systems that were meant to both educate and employ her are leavened by the character’s wry humor; however, the novel suffers at times from a reliance on expository info-dumps to underscore its critique of higher education’s abuses, which are more effectively explored in-scene. Regardless, this exposé of academia from the perspective of its most vulnerable residents offers a vital message at a time when it’s easy to forget what’s supposed to be at the center of all institutions: people—messy, unpredictable, and filled with fragile hope. A crucial new take on the time-honored tradition of the Campus Novel.
