Helpful Score: 1
Hilarious book about two professors who swap places for year, one from a thinly disguised Berkeley and one from English red-brick university.
Quick read, fun story. It's about college life and two professors who switch places, one English and one American. They get caught up in each others lives in this 1960's set novel.
Took awhile to get into it, but it was a great book. Very funny. Well written with lots of humor.
David Lodges Changing Places is a boring 250-page exercise in navel-gazing. The book tries to take a humorous look at life in academia, but instead it is a pretentious and pompous. Additionally, while it is not his fault, the book is very dated. Originally written in 1975, it has references to women flying to England for abortions because they are illegal in the United States, to the change in music that has the younger generation gyrating on the dance floor, and to the sexual revolution and its overindulgences in partner-swapping and drug use.
The unfortunate aspect of Changing Places being an uninteresting read is that the writing style is unique and beautiful. There is no question as to why people what to read David Lodge from a purely rhetorical standpoint, as his prose have almost a poetic feel and his descriptions are vivid and realistic.
The unfortunate aspect of Changing Places being an uninteresting read is that the writing style is unique and beautiful. There is no question as to why people what to read David Lodge from a purely rhetorical standpoint, as his prose have almost a poetic feel and his descriptions are vivid and realistic.
