Author : Siobhan Phillips
Publisher : Bellevue Literary Press
ISBN 13 : 1954276001
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (542 download)
Book Synopsis Benefit by : Siobhan Phillips
Download or read book Benefit written by Siobhan Phillips and published by Bellevue Literary Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young woman discovers what lurks beneath the system that anointed her among the best and brightest of her generation “A smart, razor-sharp exploration of the precarious island of academic life and the cold unforgiving waters that surround it.” —Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather Laura, a student from a modest background, escapes her small town to join the ranks of the academic elite on a Weatherfield fellowship to study at Oxford University. She enthusiastically throws herself into her coursework, yet she is never able to escape a feeling of unease and dislocation among her fellow chosen “students of promise and ambition.” Years later, back in the United States with a PhD and dissertation on Henry James, she loses her job as an adjunct professor and reconnects with the Weatherfield Foundation. Commissioned to write a history for its centennial, she becomes obsessed by the Gilded Age origins of the Weatherfield fortune, rooted in the exploitation and misery of sugar production. As she is lured back into abandoned friendships within the glimmering group, she discovers hidden aspects of herself and others that point the way to a terrifying freedom. Benefit is a vivid debut novel of personal awakening that offers a withering critique of toxic philanthropy and the American meritocracy.