Nick McDonell's latest novel, "An Expensive Education," weaves together several tales as the most recent entry into the spy-thriller genre. McDonell has been critically acclaimed ever since he released his first novel, "Twelve" (2002), at age 17. Now, though, he seems unable to live up to his past work. "An Expensive Education" is simply not worth its cost.
The story's protagonist, Michael Teak, is a 25-year-old Harvard graduate working for the U.S. government in Somalia. When a village is attacked, everyone immediately blames a mysterious man named Hatashil, the leader of a rebel group struggling against the oppressive government. Teak questions this blame, as he cannot comprehend why a freedom fighter would murder his own people.
Meanwhile, at Harvard, wealthy reporter Jane (perhaps the least likeable character in literature since Emily Brontë's Heathcliff) is in a relationship with David, a Somali refugee. David is close to Susan Lowell, a professor who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for a book based on her extensive research in Somalia with Razi, an Iranian alcoholic.
In Somalia, Teak travels through the country in a desperate search for answers, but finds few from the American paramilitary he encounters. In Cambridge, Lowell is forced to defend her book and its positive portrayal of Hatashil. Though McDonell hints at an inappropriate relationship between researcher and subject, he never offers enough of their history, and the intrigue falls flat.
Minor characters struggle while the main plots between Teak and Lowell unfold. David, Lowell's favorite student, attempts to join an elite finals club that would offer him the opportunities for internships and networking that he lacks as a foreign student. McDonell expertly captures David's difficulty ingratiating himself with the college community during orientation and his reasons for joining a pretentious finals club and dating a cynical, heartless girlfriend.
Jane, in between binge drinking and meaningless sex with David, investigates Lowell and brings the book's possible inaccuracies to the forefront of the university's and the nation's consciousnesses. As David, under the tutelage of Teak's godfather, Alan Green, moves closer to being accepted at a finals club, Jane travels to Somalia and meets Teak. He, having discovered the truth, is the only person who can clear Lowell's name and reveal what really happened during the massacre.
"An Expensive Education" offers many fascinating characters, whose pettiness and flaws turn them from caricatures in an unrealistic adventure into real human beings. Though unlikeable, Lowell, Razi and David, especially, maintain relationships and suffer from past pains that provide the best moments in this novel. The story suffers from not providing enough background, and the reader may want to hear more about Razi's history and David and Jane's complicated, if not outright dysfunctional, relationship.
The novel's focus on sex is another drawback. David and Jane's intimacies, and those of other characters, do not move the plot forward or offer any sensual enjoyment. The sex, along with the use of drugs and alcohol, seems randomly included and even gratuitous.
In the author's attempt to turn his publication into the next Jason Bourne thriller, McDonell includes mysterious phrases that attempt to intrigue but instead exhibit a certain literary laziness. "It was about time, but then maybe it wasn't," is just one example of the vague writing.
This tale of deceit, crime, murder, betrayal, reputation and academia has great potential. The novel is successful as a social commentary on prestigious universities, including their wealthy, irresponsible students and pressured professors, and strongly portrays a slew of revealing character narratives and emotional interactions. But it suffers from a slow-moving middle and forced connections between Teak and the university-centered subplots.
At no point is the reader dying to find out what happens next. This is a testament to both McDonell's clichéd writing and his failure to string together a strong, cohesive thread in the novel. Though an insightful portrait of tortured souls, "An Expensive Education" ultimately disappoints the genre by providing little in the way of political intrigue and suspense.
