Read A Student of History Audible Audio Edition Nina Revoyr Tim Fannon Recorded Books Books
Download As PDF : A Student of History Audible Audio Edition Nina Revoyr Tim Fannon Recorded Books Books
A contemporary Los Angeles story of uncrossable social lines, allegiance and betrayal, immeasurable power, and the ways the present is continually shaped by the past.Â
Rick Nagano is a graduate student in the history department at USC, struggling to make rent on the South Los Angeles apartment near the neighborhood where his family once lived. When he lands a job as a research assistant for the elderly Mrs. W--, the heir to an oil fortune, he sees it at first simply as a source of extra cash. But as he grows closer to the iconoclastic, charming, and feisty Mrs. W--, he gets drawn into a world of privilege and wealth far different from his racially mixed, blue-collar beginnings.Â
Putting aside his half-finished dissertation, Rick sets up office in Mrs. W--'s grand Bel Air mansion and begins to transcribe her journals - which document an old Los Angeles not described in his history books. He also accompanies Mrs. W-- to venues frequented by the descendants of the land and oil barons who built the city.Â
One evening at an event, he meets Fiona Morgan - the elegant scion of an old steel family - who takes an interest in his studies. Irresistibly drawn to Fiona, he agrees to help her with a project of questionable merit in the hopes he'll win her favor.Â
A Student of History explores both the beginnings of Los Angeles and present-day dynamics of race and class. It offers a window into the usually hidden world of high society and the influence of historic families on current events. Like Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby, it features, in Rick Nagano, a young man of modest means who is navigating a world where he doesn't belong.Â
Set in a modern-day Los Angeles that's both familiar and unknown, A Student of History is a story of uncrossable social lines, allegiance and betrayal, immeasurable power, and the ways the present is continually shaped by the past.
Read A Student of History Audible Audio Edition Nina Revoyr Tim Fannon Recorded Books Books
"I started out really liking this book. It's a fun if not too difficult to solve little mystery that peels back the curtain on L.A.'s uber-wealthy and makes some valid points about class and race in the process. The book is largely well-written.
So don't get me wrong with what I'm about to write. I enjoyed the book. It was good. But it could have been great if not for the clichés.
First off, the uber-wealthy women who populate the book are all of a type – unnaturally thin, over-modified and not very nice. They certainly don’t reflect the diversity of women who actually attend charity functions in Los Angeles.
Worse, the book is written from the POV of a male character who repeatedly makes comments about how "natural women" (i.e., with no plastic surgery) are so much more attractive. Take, for instance, these two sentences, both on page 145:
" ...a forty-ish too-thin society blonde and a normal-seeming woman of thirty or so..."
"Sarah was lovier in her natural, unaltered states than most of these fancier ladies."
Secondly, the author’s resentment of privilege is palpable. It’s reverse snobbery that wasn’t necessary for the author to make her points.
Example: the protagonist, a graduate history student, drives a beat-up old Honda. A valet bringing up the car after a posh function asks a rich woman if it’s her car and the woman gets angry and says "Certainly not." The chef catering a charity lunch tells the protagonist that the guests are horrible people. As if everyone donating lots of money to charity would be awful, or someone working the event would be so unprofessional and stupid as to badmouth the people who hire him.
I don’t really want to rag too much on a well-written book about an interesting subject. L.A. comes alive in the pages.
So recommended with reservations, as noted.
Oh, and side note to the author: Edward VIII was NOT so fat he needed a love chair. That was Edward VII. I’m guessing this was a typo. Flagging it so you can correct it if there are subsequent printings."
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A Student of History Audible Audio Edition Nina Revoyr Tim Fannon Recorded Books Books Reviews :
A Student of History Audible Audio Edition Nina Revoyr Tim Fannon Recorded Books Books Reviews
- I'd never heard of author Nina Revoyr til I read a review of her newest novel, "A Student of History" the other day. The book - perhaps a Gatsby-lite tale - sounded interesting so I downloaded it. A short 240 pages, the novel takes us up Bellagio Drive in Bel Air to the rarefied world of the WASP super upper class. This group is the descendants of the original settlers - the Dohenys, the Mulhollands, the Chandlers, etc - who had made their money in oil and land investments like orange groves an d property development. This group tends not include "new money", like the members of the entertainment industry. You won't find many, if any, Jewish or Hispanic names among these members of the Los Angeles Country Club or the attendees at fancy museum galas. One of the most important members of this upper-upper class is "Marian W", whose grandfather made a vast fortune and passed it along to his son, Marian's father. Marian W lives at the top of Bel Air, in a compound of houses. At 75, she still participates in social activities.
Invited into this milieu is Rick Nagano, a late 20's graduate student at USC. He's taken all the courses for his PHD (in history) and is working on his doctoral thesis. He's recently broken up with his girlfriend and is literally drifting though life. Rick is hired on by Marian W to help with her memoirs. He's from a working class family and has risen above his family in education level. Rick becomes a protegee of sorts to Marian W and is introduced into society, while being placed at a back table at the luncheons. She gets him kitted up in the right clothes and other encoutrements to make him more presentable. Rick also meets - and falls hard for - Fiona Morgan, a married woman a few years older than him.
Nina Revoyr's book is a look at how a well-meaning young man gets involved with a social group well above his own and how his own values suffer. No one, including Rick Nagano, is a saint but the deviousness and venality displayed by members of Marian and Fiona's group is astounding. Rick's story is told in rather flat prose, which is the way it should be. With a little imagination you may be able to turn the story and characters into a police report.
Revoyr's a powerhouse story-teller. I want to read her three or four previous novels. - Thinking back after I finished the book, I realized how much Revoyr’s ultra wealthy characters shield themselves by walls. Richard’s patron, Mrs. W__, lives high up on a Los Angeles estate so large and secluded that nobody outside her circle would even that know it—and she—were there. When Richard is introduced into that circle of old money elites, he soon learns that all over the city there are private spaces hidden from view of the hoi polloi, so that members of the circle don’t have to interact with regular people.
There are even walls within walls. When Richard attends an outdoor charity function and becomes overwhelmed by the spectacle of excess and waste, he slips through an ornamental hedge. Only on the other side of that hedge is he able to have a conversation with a normal person. And, not surprisingly, there are figurative walls; the barriers of privilege and influence that ensure the members of the circle will not have to suffer the legal and other negative consequences of their actions.
Richard, once allowed behind these barriers learns that they are also a form of quarantine, because there is a sickness of the soul that has infected the members of the circle. In this short, searing novel, we see what happens to Richard when he is exposed to that sickness.
This is not a pleasant story, but it’s keenly observed and memorable. This would make an excellent book club read for both its literary merits and its thought-provoking depiction of our modern era of financial and social inequality. - I started out really liking this book. It's a fun if not too difficult to solve little mystery that peels back the curtain on L.A.'s uber-wealthy and makes some valid points about class and race in the process. The book is largely well-written.
So don't get me wrong with what I'm about to write. I enjoyed the book. It was good. But it could have been great if not for the clichés.
First off, the uber-wealthy women who populate the book are all of a type – unnaturally thin, over-modified and not very nice. They certainly don’t reflect the diversity of women who actually attend charity functions in Los Angeles.
Worse, the book is written from the POV of a male character who repeatedly makes comments about how "natural women" (i.e., with no plastic surgery) are so much more attractive. Take, for instance, these two sentences, both on page 145
" ...a forty-ish too-thin society blonde and a normal-seeming woman of thirty or so..."
"Sarah was lovier in her natural, unaltered states than most of these fancier ladies."
Secondly, the author’s resentment of privilege is palpable. It’s reverse snobbery that wasn’t necessary for the author to make her points.
Example the protagonist, a graduate history student, drives a beat-up old Honda. A valet bringing up the car after a posh function asks a rich woman if it’s her car and the woman gets angry and says "Certainly not." The chef catering a charity lunch tells the protagonist that the guests are horrible people. As if everyone donating lots of money to charity would be awful, or someone working the event would be so unprofessional and stupid as to badmouth the people who hire him.
I don’t really want to rag too much on a well-written book about an interesting subject. L.A. comes alive in the pages.
So recommended with reservations, as noted.
Oh, and side note to the author Edward VIII was NOT so fat he needed a love chair. That was Edward VII. I’m guessing this was a typo. Flagging it so you can correct it if there are subsequent printings.
