Starred review from January 6, 2014
Nearly 50 years after Bel Kaufman’s bestselling novel, Up the Down Staircase, depicted the hectic landscape of an inner-city high school via a variety of documents, Thier’s debut novel applies the same conventions to the world of higher education; specifically, that of a singular New England institution called Tripoli College. A letter from the late 18th century and a contemporary circular identify Tripoli as a school founded for Native Americans with a sister campus in the West Indies. Loopy course descriptions, the minutiae of faculty meetings, blurbs from the school newspaper, et al., create a delicious texture and form the structure of the book. The centerpiece of the novel is a hilariously deadpan chronology, full of conspicuous omissions, courtesy of a huge banana corporation; it begins with “Prehistory: Delicious bananas evolve in South or Southeast Asia.” Plot comes via two odd couples. The first is an elderly dean named Bill Brees (who has gone awkwardly undercover, posing as a student, and shares his “discoveries” in a blog) and an African-American student, Maggie Bell, who becomes an unlikely kindred soul for Brees. The second couple is the two linked campus settings: the sleepy elegance of the New England environment is sharply at odds with the turbulent West Indies campus, where Bill’s visit climaxes the novel. A droll comedy of modern manners, incisive without being angry, this satire within satire within satire will delight the right audience.
Starred review from January 15, 2014
Academic satire meets anti-globalization polemic in Thier's debut. The tale of Tripoli College is told piecemeal, in an accretion of memos, newspaper excerpts, diary entries, historical accounts, emails--and slave narratives, old and new. The college, an institution of higher learning that hardly dares call itself elite or Ivy League, manages, in spite of a recession-gutted endowment, to subsist thanks to its robust athletic department and innovative proxy college on St. Renard in the Caribbean. St. Renard, island habitat of the medicinal (or poisonous?) "Ghost Apple" originally cultivated by its first indigenous population, the long extinct Carawak Indians, is still largely dependent on its sugar industry. In short, Tripoli, with its failing finances--the football team is losing steadily thanks to woefully inept kickers--is ripe for corporate takeover by the global snack food/pharma conglomerate Big Anna(R). To gain more insight into Tripoli student life, William Brees, Tripoli's 70-year-old dean of students, goes undercover to live in a dorm and party with a crew of slacker freshmen. He quickly develops a crush on Maggie Bell, an African-American student from a privileged background, whose emails to her twin brother, Chris, reveal that she has a crush on charismatic history professor John Kabaka. Disgusted with Tripoli's craven acceptance of corporate governance--Big Anna(R)'s minions muzzle the student newspaper, squelch academic freedom and, in acts of political correctness carried to unimaginable extremes, perpetrate atrocities against a college benefactor descended from slaveholders--Kabaka flees to St. Renard to foment revolt. As Megan and professor Brees soon learn, while they spend an ill-advised semester on the pestilential isle, Big Anna(R) has, in the name of reducing its carbon footprint, abandoned mechanized forms of sugar production. This forces it to resort to the only other large-scale sugar growing and refining mechanism possible: slave labor. In arch language mirroring everything from annual report puffery to 17th-century castaway journals, Thier manages to lampoon corporate evil without ever underestimating or dismissing it. An improbable laugh riot.
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December 1, 2013
New England's Tripoli College has fallen on hard times. Originally, the school accepted only Wapahanock Indians from the island of Saint Reynard in the Caribbean. Now, in an attempt to keep the school solvent, it accepts students of all backgrounds. The college has also partnered with Big Anna, a snack food company with factories on Saint Reynard. There are troubling rumors about how Big Anna treats its workers. What does "low carbon agriculture" mean, anyway? And what is in those snacks beside sugar? Big Anna also uses the college football team as test subjects for a mood-altering supplement produced by its pharmaceutical subdivision. On a semester at the Saint Reynard campus, one student discovers the horrible truth about Big Anna. The book is made up of a hilarious collection of letters, course descriptions, blog posts, and newspaper articles. Minutes of faculty meetings are particularly entertaining. VERDICT Essayist Thier's (The Nation; New Republic) novel satirizes higher education, big business, slavery, medicine, and teenage angst with a razor-sharp wit. Readers will enjoy this complex story.--Joanna Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Libs., Providence
Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
January 1, 2014
Through an insanely fun mixture of pseudo-historical letters, blog posts, emails, newsletters, advertisements, and even course listings, Thier takes readers on a dark tour of life at Tripoli College in New England and its Caribbean island proxy school on the fictional St. Renard. Tripoli was founded in 1794 due to the guilty conscience of the grandson of a St. Renard sugarcane plantation owner. Now, a CFO with a gambling penchant has squandered the college's resources, and the board decides to accept funding from Big Anna, a snack food giant with dubious business practices. The story of slave conditions in the island campus' field studies, the minutes of faculty meetings held hostage by a psycho English professor, and the blog posts of a kindly 70-year-old dean of students posing as a college freshman help fill out the details of this raucous adventure. By drawing on historical documents about visitors to the West Indies and slave narratives, Thier brings authenticity to his unusual tale of a school gone off the rails.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)