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Fall semester 2009. Will Thierry is burnt out. He thought he had written a philosophy to end all philosophies. Instead, after abandoning his former life in New York, he has found himself stuck in Ohio at a perpetually renovated public university where the students don’t care, the faculty is spread thin, and the administration is executing budget cuts of epic proportion, including Will’s department and his job. To make matters worse, he suspects he is being stalked by his ex-girlfriend Lily Zephyr, inarguably the reason why he is in this purgatory of suburban sprawl and Sunday dinners. In an attempt to track down his pursuer, Will embarks on a paranoid investigation that leads him to strange coincidences, colleague conflicts, an affair with another professor’s wife, the archives of an obscure Italian architect, recruiting a student as his own private investigator, and yes, even vertigo, all to confront a past he thought he’d left behind.
Part satire, part murder mystery, and part fractured love story, Collegiate Gothic is a tale of death and obsession in our troubled American moment.
“Deftly narrated through a chorus of voices, propelled by melancholy and suspense, the mystery of a dead girl deepens and unravels throughout this whip-smart debut.”
—David Giffels, national-bestselling author of All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House and Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America.
“His characters are poignant, ridiculous, and, alas for us, completely convincing—their lives, like ours, serving as fodder in a deadly serious game.”
—Varley O’Connor, author of The Welsh Fasting Girl and The Master’s Muse.
