We at the Fix would have guessed otherwise:
Kogan’s premise is in equal measures clever and nauseating: Four roommates from Harvard University’s Class of 1989 (Clover, Addison, Jane and Mia) have returned to campus for their 20th reunion. The titular red book is the one published in advance of every five-year reunion, in which Harvard graduates write a few paragraphs summarizing their lives. The novel’s overlapping plots are fueled by the discrepancy between these summaries and the truth…
Kogan — who grew up in the D.C. area and graduated from Harvard in 1988 — perfectly captures the alternately braggy, self-effacing, resilient tone of these brief autobiographies: “We spend our winters skiing at our house in Zermat” vs. “Three years ago, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I have good days and bad days, but mostly I try just not to dwell on it.”
…To fault a novel set at a Harvard reunion for fetishizing elitism is, I suppose, like complaining that salmon tastes fishy.
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