Small World
by David Lodge

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Book Reviews of Small World

Book Review: A delightful novel on the underwritten subject of academia
Summary: 5 Stars

Even if novels on academic life were plentiful, this one would stand out. Lodge has written many superb books, but this one just may be his best. It was also one of the first to be widely available in the US. I still remember vividly in the 1980s having to search out Penguin editions published in Canada because he was largely unavailable in the US.

The novel features some of the characters we came to know in CHANGING PLACES, including Philip Swallow and Morris Zapp, and takes place to a large extent at a number of academic conferences. Although a first-hand acquaintance with higher education isn't a prerequisite, anyone who has been to graduate school or taught will find a host of familiar characters and situation. Lodge magnificently lampoons the intellectual posturing and gamesmanship that fills the small world of the scholar. The novel manages to be both accurate and quite funny at the same time.

At one point in my life, I worked in a number of bookstores. One of my happier experiences was to have been employed at a campus bookstore in Chicago during Lodge's first reading tour of the United States (I believe this was around 1990). I was happy to spend some time with him along with other employees before his reading, and I remember his being so surprised that so many in the US had read his work, given the difficulty at the time of getting his novels in the states. He was an enormously pleasant person, and he gave a fine reading from NICE WORK. A final word on that: many speak of NICE WORK as being the final novel in a trilogy. I have trouble with that. CHANGING PLACES and SMALL WORLD feature many common characters, none of whom reappear in NICE WORK. Fans of the first two may be disappointed to find that NICE WORK, as fine as it is, does not continue the story of the other two novels.

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