From Amazon.com
Readers of Jon Hassler's
Rookery Blues will remember Leland Edwards as a high-spirited young English professor and jazz pianist who, with like-minded fellow academics, formed a quartet called Icejam in 1969. In Hassler's latest novel,
The Dean's List, Leland is 25 years older and a much sadder man. Now the dean of Rookery State College, a mediocre institution in northern Minnesota, Leland finds his administrative duties and his dying mother shouldering out what little energy or time he has for music. But if Leland Edwards has given up his dreams of a jazz career, he still has some hopes for his reputation as an academic. When a famous elderly poet, Richard Falcon, comes to Rookery State to work on what he hopes will be his final masterpiece, Leland sees an opportunity to put himself and his institution on the map.
The Dean's List is more melancholy than its predecessor. Still, Jon Hassler's inimitable style, his flair for character, and his well-limned portraits of Minnesota and its people lighten the shadow of gloom that hangs over Rookery State College this year.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
In this sequel to Rookery Blues (LJ 6/1/95), Hassler revisits Rookery State College in Minnesota some 30 years later. Leland Edwards, one of the faculty in the first book, is now dean of the college. In spite of growing older and more successful, however, he is still striving to understand his family and friends, tentatively exploring new relationships, and often simply trying to survive the follies of campus life in the 1990s. These are not easy tasks since he has complex ties to his dependent mother and his ex-wife. Additionally, he is constantly beset by academic Philistines who are more concerned with finances than education. Using both humor and affection, Hassler has developed quirky, eccentric, but believable characters to bedevil Leland and entertain the reader. In doing so, he has succeeded in portraying the small gains and losses that make up daily life for most people. Recommended for most contemporary fiction collections.?Barbara E. Kemp, SUNY at Albany
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
