Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Language more literary than illuminating
With my interest in the academic genre -- David Lodge is good, light humor, Richard Russo's "Straight Man" was a wonderful, comedic treat -- Amazon directed me to "Groves", where I quickly proceeded to become lost among the trees.Like Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim", a book I found to be absent much appeal, McCarthy offers a highly literate analysis of the travails of a male professor struggling at university after World War II. McCarthy's Henry Mulcahy is strapped by poverty, with a sickly wife and four children, in a temporary teaching position offered, in part, out of a sense of guilt by the college president. Then Mulcahy gets the dreaded and unexpected "non-renewal" letter. Some aspects of academic life have not changed in fifty years: petty squabbles and politics, the longing for job security, the poor wages of some professors, the need for intrinsic interest in teaching, the complaints about students' habits. But the focus on communism and loyalty oaths as a basis for job insecurity is a distant memory to most people. And Mulcahy's own dishonesty (or grasp of reality) left me confused rather than sympathetic. Rather I found myself attuned to Mulcahy's nemesis, the president. The story is simple yet the tone of the book put me off. There was more philosophy than conversation, and when academics did speak, they spoke in a fashion most would find hard to expect in conversation. I grew bored. The characters weren't that interesting despite their intelligence, and I found myself speed reading the last thirty pages. And I found myself as displeased with "Groves" as I had been with "Lucky Jim". Sometimes very literate and well-educated authors don't translate well to my level, to meet my self-admittedly need for a clearer, more linear story and engaging characters.
Rating:  - lacks nuance
This book gave me the same desire I sometimes have at an art gallery, to touch up someone else's painting; not that it's not a good painting, but if I were painting it...Anyway, this work will amuse those deep in the belly of the academic beast, but knowing that they would be her audience, why did the author spend so much time explaining the minutiae of life at a small college? A reference here and there would have been sharper. If you haven't yet read Kingsley Amis's _Lucky Jim_, start there, and leave this for later.
Rating:  - Cackle, cackle, cackle.
Sometimes one reads a piece of satire that makes one wish he/she were the work's author. Such is the case with this novel. It is deliciously unsparing of the culture of academia and a delight to anyone who is familiar with that world.
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