Sharp\u2019s deadpan debut reads like a gen Z update on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, playfully skewering modern literary tropes<\/p>\n
The unnamed 28-year-old narrator of Avigayl Sharp\u2019s debut novel teaches literature at a girls\u2019 boarding school in the US, and is not OK. She has lost touch with her friends, is hooked on prescription stimulants and cries too easily. She is also sexually uptight, which she attributes to childhood trauma, and weirdly obsessed with Joseph Stalin (\u201chis brutality, and his paranoia, reminded me very much of my mother\u201d).<\/p>\n
The pupils at the school are brittle and entitled. One of them opines: \u201cThis guy Kafka kept acting like everything was out of his control \u2026 I thought, why don\u2019t you take a little initiative, buddy?\u201d Another \u201clet her head drop back against the window, exhausted from the effort of speech\u201d after uttering three sentences in a class discussion. They\u2019re not terribly keen on reading \u2013 \u201cdue to the devastating psychic effects of daily technological overstimulation\u201d \u2013 so she assigns them Charles Dickens\u2019s 900-page novel, Bleak House.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/29039a96e7845ad3d5afcfd6c375f59795fb7a8d\/0_812_2789_2230\/master\/2789.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=ce7ee4b8c8c8ce8ef936ecd1f2112831\" "\\"Offseason")
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