Seduction Theory

From its first line—“At the creative writing department’s end-of-year party, Ethan’s secretary fed him kale with her fingers”—Emily Adrian’s Seduction Theory lets the reader know that scholastic shenanigans are afoot. But even before that first line, a faux academic cover page announces: “SEDUCTION THEORY, Roberta Green, A Thesis Submitted to Edwards University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts.” So Seduction Theory is grad student Roberta (Robbie) Green’s story, a playful, often funny campus tale about a handful of characters at a small Northeastern liberal arts college that the sharp-eyed Robbie observes and records. These characters include Ethan, the underwhelming creative writing professor who long ago published a novel based on his wife’s loss of her mother, and who may be about to stray into the arms of his hapless secretary, Abigail, even though he’s happily married to fellow professor Simone. A renowned Woolf scholar and the glamorous star of the creative writing department, Simone is adored by her students for the memoir she wrote about losing her mother, and for her gorgeous hair. Robbie lets us know that she’s an ardent devotee of Simone’s teaching and writing. As Robbie relates Ethan’s and Simone’s summer of discontent, it soon becomes clear that Robbie is an unreliable narrator. Slowly, she reveals her own vulnerability in ways small and large. Taking Simone’s writing advice too far, Robbie sets every party scene exactly as Simone taught: with a sound, a smell and a song (“Temperate laughter. Someone’s sandalwood perfume. ‘Lola’ by The Kinks.”). And she offers revisions of scenes that don’t suit her, or that she admits she fabricated. All of this can make for a dizzyingly meta narrative, as the reader wonders what, if any, of Robbie’s story is true. Seduction Theory frequently pokes fun at academia, particularly at the rituals and eccentricities of a graduate creative-writing program—and even at Robbie’s own descent into misery. Some of the novel is in the vein of Jean Hanff Korelitz’s The Plot, with Ethan having made fiction out of his wife’s early loss, and Robbie seemingly borrowing from her teachers’ lives; and some in the vein of Julia May Jonas’ Vladimir, as characters break norms and give in to desire and obsession. And Seduction Theory is also a coming-of-age tale, as Robbie tries to understand a marriage and all its complexities from the outside, and begins to write, or rewrite, her own story. This clever, layered tale is well worth a read.