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An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman's final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaosâ??and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor. It's 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her placeâ??until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling. Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel's writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented: the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. As the lives of the adults around her slowly come apart, Isabel discovers that the line between youth and adulthood is less defined than she thought. A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, Daisy Alpert Florin's My Last Innocent Year is a timely and wise portrait of a young woman learning to trust her voice and move toward independence while recognizing the beauty and grit of where she came from… (more)
I liked the narration style with its background of a college campus enough to give 3 stars. I felt a lot of “me, me, me” culture. The characters are not much likable, even when they show they care for each other. I was bearing Isabel for her voice in the novel but her obsession with the professor shows her disrespect for herself in the end. The story should have ended 20 pages sooner. In those last pages she thinks she is tying all loose ends into a neat ending but she overdoes it. ( )
I wasn't exactly sure how to review this book, because on the one hand I really liked it, but on the other it feels strange to enjoy a book that is full of such sad topics. I adored the main character and her development throughout the timeline was so interesting, and to get to see her looking back and interpreting things. This book did a great job of dealing with a complicated issue, allowing the reader to empathize with her and to wish they were there to fight for her. You could see where she would be drawn to Connelly, even though you knew she shouldn't. The part about the professor and the kid was very original.
For readers of My Dark Vanessa that don't want quite as dark of a novel. It still deals with the same content but it doesn't feel as hopeless in this one, which I enjoyed because I wanted her to be okay.
All this being said, there is SA in this book as well as the sexual manipulation/abuse of a young girl, so if these things are triggers to you then it may be best to skip this one. ( )
In the past decade, I have read a lot of books about twenty-something women trying to find themselves — and not enjoyed most of them — but My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin hit all the right notes for me. In the late 1990s, Isabel Rosen is slouching through her last year at Wilder College in New Hampshire like a lot of people — trying to figure it all out as graduation approaches. Florin sprinkles in just the right amount of omniscient to her first-person narration to give readers glimpses of the past and future as we watch Isabel deal with a complicated present. I liked My Last Innocent Year, and readers who enjoy coming-of-age, college novels will, too. ( )
The way the book was written was very engaging. The older voice was telling the story of her college days making this very entertaining. Also college at the end of 1990’s. Cell phones but no social media. ( )
Such a beautifully written book! It's 1998 and Isabel Rosen is going into her last semester at a small Northeastern college. Her dad has worked hard his entire life in order to be able to send Isabel to college, but he disapproves of her desire to become a writer. However, an attractive male professor encourages Isabel to explore and expand her writing and her social life, changing her life forever. Telling the story as a now-grown woman, Isabel hints about her current life while providing vivid detail of her last college semester. The characters were brought to life so well, the feelings and emotions shine through and wrench the reader's heart. I won this book from LibraryThing. ( )
In retrospect it seems to me that those days before I knew the names of all the bridges were happier than the ones that came later, but perhaps you will see that as we go along.
Joan Didion, “Goodbye to All That”
Dedication
For my mother, who taught me about beauty, and my father, who taught me to tell stories
First words
It's hard to say how I ended up in Zev Neman's dorm room the night before winter break.
Quotations
Men admire each other when they are at their best, but women enjoy meeting each other in pits of despair.
…you can always start over in knitting, something you can never do in life. There is no such thing as a clean slate. We take our decisions with us, no matter how much we wish we could leave them behind.
What made a girl a woman? Through what mechanism did we pass from one state to another? … I always thought there would be boundaries or milestones, something to mark the transition, but I was beginning to think the process wasn't binary, that, like consent, it existed somewhere along a vast continuum. The lines were there only until you crossed them.
Last words
I wanted to tell her something, anything, but for the life of me, I couldn't think what.
An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman's final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaosâ??and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor. It's 1998 and Isabel Rosen, the only daughter of a Lower East Side appetizing store owner, has one semester left at Wilder College, a prestigious school in New Hampshire. Desperate to shed her working-class roots and still mourning the death of her mother four years earlier, Isabel has always felt like an outsider at Wilder but now, in her final semester, she believes she has found her placeâ??until a nonconsensual sexual encounter with one of the only other Jewish students on campus leaves her reeling. Enter R. H. Connelly, a once-famous poet and Isabel's writing professor, a man with secrets of his own. Connelly makes Isabel feel seen, beautiful, talented: the woman she longs to become. His belief in her ignites a belief in herself, and the two begin an affair that shakes the foundation of who Isabel thinks she is, for better and worse. As the lives of the adults around her slowly come apart, Isabel discovers that the line between youth and adulthood is less defined than she thought. A coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, Daisy Alpert Florin's My Last Innocent Year is a timely and wise portrait of a young woman learning to trust her voice and move toward independence while recognizing the beauty and grit of where she came from
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This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
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