The Devil and Webster

January 23, 2017
Korelitz (Admission) raids the current news climate for this hot-topic read about diversity, protest, and “liberal idiocy” on the campus of progressive Webster College, headed by its first female and Jewish president, Naomi Roth, a feminist academic with her own radical past. Roth’s pride in Webster’s evolution from white male homogeneity to carefully culled inclusion is tested by the denial of tenure to popular black professor Nicholas Gall, which spawns a massive student movement to protect him led by Omar Khayal, a charismatic Palestinian student. Though Roth prides herself on speaking “truth to power,” when she is the “establishment” her words fall on deaf ears. They fail to impress even her own daughter, Hannah, a member of the protest movement; best friend, Francine, the college’s admissions dean going through her own academic crisis; and the restive college board. There’s much to ponder in this dense political and social debate, and it’s as overwhelming to Naomi as it is to readers, who, though pitying her no-win situation, can see the hypocrisy that blinds her. Ultimately, it isn’t the political twist that’s so riveting in Korelitz’s morality tale, but the apolitical, ageless struggle of a mother letting go of her daughter, a fact “so very ordinary, but... everything, too.”

December 1, 2016
The president of an elite New England college grapples with student protest in Korelitz's sixth novel (You Should Have Known, 2014, etc.).Naomi Roth is Webster College's first female president, a fitting denouement to the school's half-century evolution from a bastion of WASP privilege to a progressive institution housing a diverse faculty and student body. Naomi, herself from an earlier generation of demonstrators, is inclined to be tolerant when a group of students camps on the Webster quad to protest the denial of tenure to popular professor Nicholas Gall. Although the students insinuate it's because Gall is black, in fact his only published work was found to be plagiarized--but if Naomi says that, Gall could sue the college. She hopes the protestors, who include her daughter, Hannah, will soon fade away, but she hasn't reckoned on the charisma of Omar Khayal, a student of Palestinian origins, whose soft-spoken demeanor belies his ability to inflame the situation at every turn. Korelitz has always been a deft plotter, so presumably it's intentional that readers will figure out Omar is not what he seems long before Naomi does. She is the latest in the author's long line of smart but blinkered female protagonists, but this time the origins of Naomi's obtuseness remain murky, and her relationships with secondary characters like best friend Francine Rigor, Webster dean of admissions, are less fully fleshed than usual. In addition, the academic concerns that made such a vivid backdrop for the human drama of Admission (2009) here seem excessively self-referential, as does the endless wrangling about just how inclusive Webster really is. Granted, this is currently a hot topic on real-life campuses, but it needs a more compelling fictional framework. Nonetheless, Korelitz's smooth prose and unfailing intelligence make this novel worth reading, if not quite up to her usual high standards. A bit of a disappointment from a talented author.

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February 15, 2017
As a college student, Naomi Roth questioned authority. Now, as the first woman president of elite Webster College, Naomi Roth is the authority. When a protest over the denial of tenure for a beloved professor evolves into an unruly, Occupy Wall Street-type tent encampment on campus, Roth tries to keep both an open mind and an open door. Roundly ignored by students and increasingly excoriated by peers, press, and parents, Roth faces further challenges when tensions and violence escalate. At the heart of the demonstrations is Omar Khayal, a Palestinian student who famously lost his family to sectarian unrest and escaped to the U.S. rather than be recruited as a suicide bomber. Quiet, charismatic, and eloquent, Khayal captures media attention and captivates students, especially Roth's own daughter, Hannah. In the strength and conviction with which her defiant student and dedicated college president address entitlement and acceptance, prejudice and privilege, Korelitz, author of the best-selling You Should Have Known (2014), taps into the current unsettled campus and cultural zeitgeist with eerie precision.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

November 1, 2016

Former student radical Naomi Roth, the first female president of Webster College, isn't bothered by the once conservative campus's fiery progressives. But when a young Palestinian with a tragic past emerges as leader of a protest over a beloved professor's denial of tenure, there's trouble. Korelitz's last title, You Should Have Known, has sold 150,000 copies across formats.

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 26, 2017
A consummate actor, Burton hits all the right notes delving into the conflicted inner life of Webster College President Naomi Roth: she convincingly portrays Roth’s pain that her daughter is growing older and moving on, and as she deals with a student rebellion and its leader, Palestinian student Omar Kayal, whom she at once admires and distrusts. Burton makes listeners ponder, as Roth does, sets of antithetical values: freedom and discipline, friendship and principles, youthful idealism and unrestrained rebellion, pity and common sense. This is a thought-provoking book and Burton’s narration is excellent throughout. A Grand Central hardcover.