Uncommonly Disappointing

An Uncommon Education: A Novel by Elizabeth Percer
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This started out so promisingly, with sweetly tender descriptions of a girl's childhood intentions (to become a doctor and make artificial hearts to help people who, like her dad, had weak ones) and first love (an adopted Jewish boy with a predilection for sketching yellow birds). But once the boy moved away and the girl went off to Wellesley, I just sortof got lost. Too many indistinguishable female characters in the Shakespearean club and a roommate who faded out of the story contributed to a general sense of aimlessness in the narrative. I actually kept half-expecting the girl to have a lesbian love affair at her all-girls college, but apparently her only undergrad tryst was a one-night stand with a masked, and apparently rather unattractive, visiting professor-- an encounter that felt more than a little squicky, but for all its oddness doesn't seem to have much importance to the story.