Vladimir – Julia May Jonas [Review]

Vladimir is told through the eyes of a 58 year old English Literature professor, whose husband (John) is embroiled in a sex scandal with several past students. The open nature of their marriage means the book is less concerned with a scorned wife narrative. Instead, it is about practically navigating the situation she has found herself in, and the consequences of this arrangement for both parties.

We are exposed to a lot of themes in a relatively short book. Power dynamics, gender roles, motherhood, and working in academia, to name a few, and all from a relatively lesser heard perspective. Her narration is reliably unreliable, which I grew to enjoy; the duality between the debilitating lust for Vladimir and being a powerful woman, between her clear dislike for her husbands actions and the open marriage contract she has agreed to that facilitates this, between gawking at the thought that these consenting adults were raped and her obvious understanding that they were in that situation because of a power imbalance.

I liked the honesty with which she was written. She has thoughts, indulgences, fears. She’s insecure but vain at the same time, very self assured but second guesses herself at times, she can be cruel but also caring. This felt more like I was inside someone’s mind than any other book I have read recently. Sometimes the transition from one observation to an entirely separate one, all while in the middle of a conversation, felt very natural. She would set out on a walk with her daughter, Sid, and you'd be forgiven for forgetting this because you’d have just spent the last 7 pages reading about some seemingly unrelated thoughts. This doesn’t mean it was particularly difficult to follow, though - it really did seem at times like someone is talking to you but you are daydreaming, momentarily in a world of your own.

About three quarters of the way through, though, the book changes pretty dramatically. It suddenly becomes much faster paced, more plotty, and no longer as interested in the entire world that had just been built for the last 170 pages. Her inner monologue and that style remained, but it felt like a different book altogether, as plot lines were abandoned and her objectives escalated. This left several unanswered questions, in addition to the questions I had already compiled.