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Dear Monica Lewinsky : A Novel.
Jean Dornan is haunted by the affair she had with her older professor decades ago, and when she begins to reread her old diaries, she realizes that it took place at the same time as the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Filled with guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness, and to her shock, Saint Monica appears to lead her back in time to reassess what happened. Had Jean merely been weak, stupid, blind, as she has told herself for years? What was it about her that led her into the affair? What did she really do that summer?
Record details
- ISBN: 9780385551502
- Physical Description: 320 pages ; 23 cm
- Publisher: Canada : Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2026.
Content descriptions
| Immediate Source of Acquisition Note: | Library Bound Incorporated |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | FICTION / Feminist FICTION / Literary FICTION / Satire |
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- 0 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.
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- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lakeshore Branch | ON ORDER | pr08244563 | FICTION | On order | - |
- Random House, Inc.
From the acclaimed author of American Mermaid (âSublimeââNYTBR) comes a wise, funny, and wildly original examination of female desire and the price women pay for giving in to their appetites.
âLangbein has the uncanny ability to make a reader laugh out loud again and again while also laying bare â in her brilliant, singular way â the specific travail of being a young woman.â âClaire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
âComic novels with heft are the rarest stars in the literary firmament, and this one burns as brightly as the sun.â âKaty Hays, author of Saltwater
Forty-year-old Jean Dornan cannot escape the summer of 1998, when, as a college student studying abroad in France, she embarked on an inappropriate relationship with her professor. Now, decades later, when that professor contacts her out of the blue with an invitation to his retirement ceremony, Jeanâs long-standing malaise becomes an emotional crisis. Desperate to understand why this relationship derailed her life so completely, she begins rereading her old diaries and is shocked to realize that her own disastrous affair occurred during the summer of the Lewinsky scandal, yet she never saw the parallels.
In a frenzy of guilt and regret, Jean finds herself praying to Monica Lewinsky for forgiveness as if she were a secular saint, a figure of both suffering and sympathy. To Jeanâs shock, Saint Monica appearsâpowerful, radiant, wise, and wittyâand guides Jean like the Ghost of Christmas Past back to the summer of 1998. Had Jean merely been naive and stupid, as she has told herself for so long? Was it sheer weakness that led her into the affair? Or will Jean, with Saint Monica by her side, see past blame to the beauty of her younger selfâs search for pleasure, connection, and transcendence?
Told in flashbacks of those sunlit six weeks in France, replete with Saint Monicaâs flinty, fiery insights and interspersed with retellings of the lives of real historical martyrs, Dear Monica Lewinsky is a tender, hilarious, and wholly original examination of desire and its costs, of appetite and its denial, and of certain defeat and surprise renewal. It asks what grace and forgiveness might look like both in our own individual lives and as a society.
