Like all David Lodge books, this one is hilarious. If you've never read any David Lodge, stop wasting your time reading reviews and go buy one of his uproarious parodies of academic life.
"Small World" is about the work- and lifestyles of humanities and social science professors. They flit about the globe attending high-brow conferences, which are really just excuses to trade gossip and get laid. Along with a healthy dose of professional competition in the form of one-upsmanship, rumormongering, and verbal zingers, of course.
This book traces the interacting lives of more characters than can be easily counted. And yet Lodge keeps them all separate and gives them very realistic personality traits. Anyone who has spent time in academe will recognize these characters. Page after page had me laughing as Lodge found innumerable ways to ridicule the supposedly high-minded intellectualism of these literary types. The humanists are indeed very human.
"Small World" is an unhesitating "+"-- pick it up when you need a good laugh, or when you've just been insulted by an English professor. It is therapy for anyone who has survived higher education.
Copyright © Kim Allen 2002
