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    An Uncommon Education: A Novel
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    An Uncommon Education: A Novel
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    An Uncommon Education: A Novel
    Ebook430 pages6 hours

    An Uncommon Education: A Novel

    By Elizabeth Percer

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    For fans of Prep, Dead Poets Society, and Special Topics in Calamity Physics comes an elegant and remarkably insightful coming-of-age debut, in which a young woman’s serendipitous discovery of her college’s underground Shakespeare Society leads to an unforgettable series of transformations. When Naomi finds herself among “the Shakes” at Wellesley, she finally lets herself embrace the passionate inner self she’s always kept locked away. But when a sudden scandal unfolds, she will be forced to learn the limits of the relationships that have sustained her. An intimate and enthralling narrative, Elizabeth Percer’s debut novel An Uncommon Education marks the emergence of a stunning new literary talent.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 1, 2012
    ISBN9780062110985
    Unavailable
    An Uncommon Education: A Novel
    Author

    Elizabeth Percer

    Elizabeth Percer is a three-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize and has twice been honored by the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation. She received a BA in English from Wellesley and a PhD in arts education from Stanford University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship for the National Writing Project at UC Berkeley. She lives in California with her husband and three children. All Stories Are Love Stories is her second novel.

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    Reviews for An Uncommon Education

    3.5/5

    13 ratings8 reviews

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    • 1/5
      Seldom do I find myself at a loss when attempting to read a book for a review. Usually I can make myself finish the read, even if it's one that I don't particularly enjoy. However, An Uncommon Education is one that I simply could not get past the block of boredom and being unable to read!Call it a clash in tastes, or personal preference, but this book has taken 6-months of my time, and I am nowhere near the half-way mark. That being said, I found nothing wrong with the writer's style, grammar, or story line! It just did not capture me.I would suggest that if the story line captivates you, that you go ahead and purchase the book and see for yourself. Then, please take the time to write your own review as well!****DISCLOSURE: This book was provided by Amazon Vine in exchange for an independent and non-biased review.
    • 3/5
      For once, I actually think the books they make comparisons to in the blurb are right on the money. Of the three, An Uncommon Education had the least in common with prep, and quite a lot in common with Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Also, I like An Uncommon Education best of all of these things. This book moves at a slow, sort of drifting pace, but the slow parts were worth it to enjoy the skilled prose and clever observations about life.

      Readers who like books with a fast pace are not likely to be well-pleased with Percer's debut. I do not mind a slow pace, so long as a story has other things to recommend it, especially if I can take my time with it, rather than trying to rush through for a deadline. Percer's writing is intricate and well-worth savoring slowly.

      What kept me from really connecting with this book is its lack of direction combined with its pretentiousness. Taking the former, the novel does not have a cohesive plot. There's nothing really propelling the reader forward. It's just a woman looking back at her life, though primarily just her childhood and college years, in the period after her mother's death.

      Naomi learns about the tenuousness of life and the dangerousness of love during her childhood. Her father has a heart attack and nearly dies in front of her right at the beginning of her story. Later on, just as she's starting on puberty and falling in love for the first time with her neighbor Teddy, his father dies, and Teddy's mom moves them away. From this point on, she avoids real close connections, a habit she cannot truly shake at college. Naomi also keeps an emotional wall up between herself and the reader, which prevented me from forming an attachment. There does come a change suddenly towards the end, and I would actually like to have seen more development of her character, so that I could wholly buy into her changed mindset.

      I suppose I knew the book would be one of those intended to highlight the mighty intellect of the author, but not to this degree. As with Special Topics in Calamity Physics, the main character becomes involved in a time-eating, addictive society, one which leads to a degradation in her classwork and some out-of-character decisions. The club, while not secret, has some seriously unsavory practices, like the parties after their performances of Shakespeare plays where the girls hook up with others, some of whom are masked to preserve their identities.

      While there's nothing wrong with a drifting plot or showing off, I just feel like some of the pieces of the novel were not entirely necessary. Some scenes seem to exist solely for exposition that reveals the vast swaths of knowledge of the author. Others seem to serve merely to add drama to the otherwise staid narration, like the revelation as to what exactly happened at one of those masked parties.

      That all comes across rather on the negative side, but I did enjoy the book and I would read something else by Elizabeth Percer, because I do like her writing. If you like Special Topics in Calamity Physics or books that make you feel cleverer for having read them, I suspect An Uncommon Education will be right up your alley.
    • 5/5
      The basics: An Uncommon Education, Elizabeth Percer's first novel, is a coming of age novel centered around Naomi Feinstein.My thoughts: As An Uncommon Education opens, Naomi Feinstein is a peculiar girl with a big intellect and no friends, yet her tale isn't one of sadness. There's a matter-of-factness to Naomi and her honest narration. She writes both of the time in which she's living and with a maturity of observation:"For entertainment I was given such things as Infamous Women coloring book; Shakespeare's plays in comic book fro; my own miniature Torah, the scroll of which was covered in wavy black lines; historically correct figures of Clara Barton and Abigail Adams; math games made pretty with glass marbles; and a jump rope with a booklet of illustrated counting rhymes to accompany it. In addition to our regular visits to the Kennedy home, every April 19th we drove to Lexington before dawn to witness the reenactment of the Battle of Lexington and Concord; every July 4th we walked the Freedom Trail."At times, I would forget how young Naomi was in the story. As the story moves through time, I settled back into Naomi's growth. Because this novel is so character-driven, parts of Naomi's journey are unsurprising, yet these events still aren't predictable. As Naomi, an intellectual, driven child, has a road map for her life: first Wellesley, then medical school to become a cardiologist, the possibility of her choosing a new path still exists. The curiosity Naomi possesses was fascinating to watch. Percer's writing is strong and fluid, and it entranced me even when Naomi's story slowed a few times.Favorite passage: "Sometimes that, more than anything, was what made me saddest about the little I knew about my family; it could be worked into almost any story, like a party trick."The verdict: An Uncommon Education is an eloquent, thoughtful coming of age story. It begins as an intellectual coming of age, but Naomi's journey is as fascinating emotionally as her uncommon education.
    • 3/5
      I requested this book from the library because my local Wellesley club is reading it, and expected to love the Wellesley portion of the book. As it turned out, this (which was also the bulk of the book) was my least favorite part and, in fact, I found it quite boring, especially the long descriptions of the Shakespeare plays where nothing much happened. The characters didn't feel developed, especially her friend Jun, and the lesbian intrigues felt a bit trivialized and undeveloped.The first section, however, about her friendship with the boy next door, was quite beautifully written and moving. (It almost felt like a different book, as if she'd written it for a writing group first and then added on the tedious Wellesley parts.) And one more thing - the book felt barely fictionalized. I kept thinking I was reading a memoir, and had to remind myself it was a novel.
    • 3/5
      Everything in Naomi Feinstein's life seems fragile. Her mother suffers from major depression, her father has a heart attack. Her best friend, Teddy, moves away. She's Jewish, but not Jewish enough for some people, given that her mother was a convert. Emotionally adrift, Naomi throws herself into schoolwork and winds up at Wellesley College. At Wellesley Naomi is still adrift, with few friends and less academic success. She joins the Shakespeare society, whose productions and members end up taking over her life. It is through the Shakespeare Society that Naomi meets her best friend, Jun, and confronts what the author bills as a cataclysmic event. This book is decidedly light on plot. There's lots of description of Naomi's day-to-day activities: roaming around campus, going to the dining hall, but not very much really happens, and much of the activity is not really connected in a meaningful way to the larger trajectory of the book. The final event, which is supposed to redefine Naomi's life, is not nearly as significant as I was expecting, nor did I find it particularly believable. Without divulging details, suffice to say that the details of the event simply did not ring true. More significantly, I found it difficult to be all that sympathetic to Naomi. The fact that she is still mooning over a childhood friend in college struck me as more pathetic than meaningful. So too, I was irritated by what seemed like throwing away a world-class education for no good reason. This book took me quite some time to get through, and at the end I didn't feel as though I'd come away with much. What I did appreciate, and what was the most positive aspect of the novel for me, was the author's love for her alma mater, Wellesley College. This shines through the text. I appreciate her love of her school and education. I suspect the author likely had quite a good experience at Wellesley, which may explain why her efforts to write of a troubled and unhappy student didn't work for me.
    • 3/5
      Naomi Feinstein is a young girl when we first meet her. Her father has barely survived a heart attack and her mother is practically invisible due to severe depression. It is around this time that Naomi decides she wants to become a doctor and attend the prestigious Wellesley College. When her only real friend, Teddy abruptly departs from her life, it's the first devastating loss from which Naomi is not sure she can recover. In the meantime, off she heads for college after getting accepted in Wellesley.Naomi soon discovers that she is just as lonely at college until the one day she sees a girl fall into the freezing waters of a lake. Soon after finds herself invited into the Shakespeare Society and she makes her first friends. It is towards the end of the novel, when a close friend is involved in an incident at school, that Naomi realizes she can not save everyone around her.The description of the book sounded much more intriguing than it really was to me. The Shakespeare Society was described as mysterious with secret rituals, but I kept waiting for all the secrecy and intrigue...nothing...Then the end of the book describes a scandal with irrevocable consequences. I kept waiting for this shocking event and really it was a small incident that one person basically decided to walk away from...hmmm. The writing is good, the characters are okay, but not very likable, sort of cold and distant. Unfortunately the plot was way too slow for me.
    • 3/5
      Ask children what they want to do when they grow up and you'll be given any number of generally entertaining answers. Follow up with those children years later and almost none of them will have become whatever profession so captured their imaginations when small. For that matter, there's an incredibly high percentage of people who don't ever even work in the field towards which their major in college would have directed them. We all seem to revise our goals and dreams as we grow up, shifting, changing, coming of age. Perhaps this is what is called maturing. Told in two distinctly different parts, An Uncommon Education by Elizabeth Percer is a coming of age tale that directly confronts set desires, goals, and expectations for the future even as life and an uncommon education mold main character Naomi Feinstein into a different person than she or those closest to her expected.As a young girl, Naomi is very close to her father and eager to fulfill his high ambitions for her. Possessed of a photographic memory, she is a loner and a misfit amongst other children, friendless and bullied at school. She spends most of her time with her father, visiting the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site over and over again. Her father's deep obsession with Rose Kennedy and her unrealized potential shapes Naomi's life. When her father collapses and has a heart attack in front of Naomi on one of their visits to the home, she vows to become a doctor to learn to fix things like her father's broken heart and the deep, clinical depression her mother suffers from throughout Naomi's life.Into Naomi's life moves a young boy named Teddy, a neighbor, a Hasidic Jew, and the only child of a very strict mother and a father with a bad heart. Over the years, Naomi and Teddy become inseparable, tied to each other closer than actual siblings. They complete each other, despite Teddy's deeply disapproving mother. But when Teddy's father dies, he and his mother move away from Boston and Naomi is left adrift without the comfort of her friend. And when she receives increasingly strange letters from him, she is devastated to discover that she cannot save him, cannot reverse whatever has gone wrong for him. Life has given her the first of its irrefutable lessons. But she still intends to go to Wellesley and become a doctor as her father has planned for so long.Arriving on campus at Wellesley, Naomi expects her life to change for the better now that she is surrounded by other high achievers like herself. And yet she finds herself even more isolated than she previously was, adrift and as friendless as she has been for most of her life. Her first year is an uncomfortable and lonely one and she looks towards the next three years as more of the same, time to be put in until she goes to medical school and starts her doctor training. But early her sophomore year, something happens that changes Naomi's life and her path. She sees a woman walk out onto the lake and slip through the ice. Helping to save Ruth, Naomi is introduced to the Shakespeare Society, fondly called Shakes, and ultimately to friends. She re-encounters Jun Oko, the Japanese economics student who bested her for the single freshman position on the tennis team the year before and the two of them, each with the weight of heavy expectations on their shoulders, become friends. It is through Jun that Naomi will finally learn that she cannot always save the others she most wants to save and that perhaps her life trajectory is not the one she and her father always imagined.The writing here is very slow and deliberate, drawing out the quiet lessons of Naomi's life at each stage. Her mother's depression and absence from her life in fundamental ways beyond physical create Naomi's character as much as her father's academic expectations do. As a character shaped by these forces, Naomi is very believeable and realistic but she still comes across to the reader at a remove. She's the narrator but she maintains a distance and detachment that make it hard to sympathize with her. Her closest friendships, with Teddy and with Jun, are described but are perhaps too cerebrally discussed to feel as natural and believable as they should. The characters surrounding Naomi at Wellesley, especially those in Shakes with her, ostensibly the community with whom she is closest, are not particularly distinct from each other and play only tangential parts in the play of her life. Although well-written, the novel felt drawn out to me. Naomi came across as an old soul in the sense that she seemed weary and unlikely to be happy in life. And the ending seemed rather abrupt and an about face given her character to that point. I wanted to really love this but I, unlike almost everyone else, just didn't.
    • 4/5
      This novel was very slow to start and several times I almost gave up. But I persevered and I am glad I did. once I realized that this was not a version of The Dead poet's Society, I just let the book lead me along at it's own pace.Naomi has no friend's as a child and seems to fit in nowhere. But then Teddy moves in and they become best friends even though his mother doesn't think Naomi is Jewish enough. But just as they begin to explore their sexuality, Teddy's father passes away and his mother moves them away and disallows them to see each other again. Naomi's mother is depressed so it is up to her father to guide her. He encourages Naomi's dream to be a doctor and she volunteers at a local hospital and takes up tennis until she leaves for Wellesley College. Her first year is not the experience she was hoping for as it is much like high school. But by her second year she meets some new friends In the Shakespeare Society, known as "The Shakes". her world opens up in ways she never expected.The story is beautifully written and full of emotion and I am glad I didn't give up on it.