The Red Book by Deborah Copaken Kogan

The Red Book

Deborah Copaken Kogan

Four room-mates from the class of '89 at Harvard meet up for their 20 year college reunion, along with other alumni of various ethnic groups and social backgrounds. This extremely raunchy account of overachievers and under-fulfilled graduates, taking stock of their lives every five years, exposes their secrets, disillusions and cheating spouses - and shows how everyone seems to be living a lie. Great fun, but not for those easily shocked!

Extract
Gunner's first novel had been praised by a number of male critics for the emotional barrenness of its language, as if that were an asset. Female readers, on the other hand, were unmoved by the book, one of them going so far as to give it the ultimate insult on a well-trafficked book blog: She 'flung it across the room'. ('Bullshit,' Gunner had said when he read this. 'No one actually flings a book across a room. Who are all these people flinging books across rooms?' Addison, who at that very minute was holding in her hands 320 bound pages of self-indulgent lad lit she was berating herself for having been duped by the hype into buying, flung it across the length of their bedroom.)
Parallels
  • Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
  • The Group by Mary McCarthy
  • Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
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Explicit sexual content

Short and sweet