A review of Drop and Add

Drop and Add by Rick Bailey is a terrific book.

An accomplished essayist, Bailey brings to his first novel all the characteristics that make his non-fiction a joy to read: a lively intelligence, the ability to limn characters in a sentence or two, an expert sense of narrative pacing that carries the reader along at top speed, and an impressively precise eye and ear for the details that make a scene and character come alive.

Bailey is a former professor who grew up in a small town, and he absolutely nails the milieus of both small-town life and academia. He is particularly strong in his depiction of the anxieties (and often-elusive joys) of life in a two-year college, especially for one who, like this novel’s narrator, is an adjunct instructor (the migrant workers of the academic world) desperate for a full-time teaching job.

From the petty one-upmanship of faculty meetings to professors’ questionable fashion choices to the concern for one’s students’ well-being that deepens over a semester, Bailey’s depiction of college teaching is accurate, witty, and at times scathing. I was sorry to see the book end.

Highly recommended.

Donald Levin, author of eleven novels, most recently The Arsenal of Deceit.