The Adjunct - by Maria Adelmann (Hardcover)

About the Book

"From the acclaimed author of How to Be Eaten, a fresh take on the campus novel that follows an adjunct professor gigging her way through academia's poor job market when she crosses paths with her old PhD adviser whose new novel might be about her. Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. Her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus. Tom and Sam have a complicated history that has haunted her career, and it's the last thing she wants to think about while navigating academic politics, institutional hurdles, and romantic entanglements with men and women that further complicate a sexuality not even she can define. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasons-and his long-awaited second novel is about a professor reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future-and herself. With biting humor and a keen eye for detail, Maria Adelmann offers a bold twist on a tangled MeToo story and turns Sam's downward spiral into a searing critique of class and the hollow promises of the American dream. A hilarious yet sobering look at how hustle culture has come to define modern academia, The Adjunct asks: Who really controls the narratives of success, identity, and power?"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of How to Be Eaten, a fresh take on the campus novel that follows an adjunct professor gigging her way through academia's poor job market when she crosses paths with her old PhD adviser whose new novel might be about her--for readers of Worry, Vladimir, and Less.

Meet Sam, an adjunct professor at a public university in Baltimore who takes a last-minute gig at the private liberal arts college down the road. Overworked and underpaid, her life is a blur of back-to-back classes, side hustles, and job applications as she attempts to claw her way toward a full-time position. But her already precarious existence is thrown into disarray when she runs into her former grad school adviser, Dr. Tom Sternberg, on campus.

Tom and Sam have a complicated history, the lasting impact of which has haunted her academic career, and it's the last thing she wants to think about as she navigates academic politics, institutional hurdles, and romantic entanglements with men and women that further complicate a sexuality not even she can define. Then she learns that Tom left his old job for undisclosed reasons--and his long-awaited second novel is about a professor's reckoning with his checkered past. As whispers spread that Sam is the inspiration behind a central character, she fights to regain control of the story while questioning everything she thought she knew about her future--and herself.

With biting humor and a keen eye for detail, Maria Adelmann offers a fresh twist on a tangled #MeToo story and turns Sam's downward spiral into a searing critique of class and the hollow promises of the American dream. A hilarious yet sobering look at how hustle culture has come to define modern academia, The Adjunct asks: Who really controls the narratives of success, identity, and power?

Review Quotes

"A darkly funny, deeply incisive exploration of academia's underbelly. Through Sam's eyes, [Adelmann] exposes the absurd hierarchies and quiet humiliations of academic life with biting wit and emotional precision. Both a campus novel and a social reckoning, The Adjunct holds up an unflinching mirror to the systems that exploit passion in the name of prestige." --Booklist

"A good writer might have a stance on some of the important issues of their time; a great writer will push the conversation further, as Maria Adelmann has done with The Adjunct. It's an outrageous, smart novel about the rat race of academia, the MeToo movement, and debt from a writer whose masterful sleight of hand is saying the quiet parts loud, who is not afraid to sit in the uncomfortable gray space--and to paint it with even more hues. Conversational yet piercing, this is a powerful portrait of a woman in dire circumstances. This book has bite and one of the most damning endings I've ever read. I'm obsessed." --Katie Yee, author of Maggie; or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar

"A slashing tale of academia's exploitative gig economy and the aftermath of the #MeToo movement . . . Adelmann takes an unsparing and witty view of academia's 'pyramid scheme' . . . This clever campus novel mischievously inverts John Williams's Stoner." --Publishers Weekly

"Maria Adelmann takes the campus novel to new, jittery, and visceral places with The Adjunct. This darkly comic novel is anxiety-provoking in the best of ways as it explodes the seamy guts of the academy, unravels the fabric of MeToo, and bursts the mystique of authorial intent. Adelmann's titular adjunct, Sam, feels so real that I bit my cheeks to shreds as her life implodes over and over until the jaw-dropping end. Beyond the visceral reading experience, I have to applaud the novel's craft, the cochlear structure that whirls in upon itself, only to finish in an open space. I loved the literary doubling, the mille-feuille of textual references, and the constant, inescapable thrum of late-stage capitalism." --Chelsea G. Summers, author of A Certain Hunger

"Disarmingly deft, surprisingly suspenseful, and full of delicious rage and language play. I have been waiting a long time for this satisfying novel about the crumbling of academia and the truth-warping storm of labor exploitation and intellectual grifting it leaves behind. A stay-up-all-night page-turner and a burning indictment of the creative class's addictions and fantasies. I inhaled this book." --Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of Housemates

About the Author

Maria Adelmann is the award-winning author of the story collection Girls of a Certain Age and the novel How to Be Eaten, an NPR book of the year and Belletrist book club pick. Her writing has been published by Tin House, n+1, Electric Literature, McSweeney's, and many others, and has been distinguished by The Best American Short Stories. Adelmann has worked variously as a hotel reviewer, product tester, and copywriter, and once sailed around the world while teaching on Semester at Sea. She is currently a writer for Wirecutter at The New York Times. She has lived in Baltimore and Copenhagen and now resides in Philadelphia.