Karlmarx.com: A Love Story

By Susan Coll

Book Overview

Ella Kennedy is in a rut. Nearly 30, it seems she is on the verge of becoming both a perpetual graduate student and a continual failure at relationships. She has spent some three years at Columbia University ripping up outlines for thesis topics as her chosen field of Marxist scholarship becomes increasingly irrelevant. Out of money and temporarily estranged from her obscenely wealthy father---America's king of discount merchandising---she is forced to take a job in Washington D.C. at the fledgling Institute of Thought. Her assignment: establish a web site and mail order catalogue to market Karl Marx paraphernalia. Her dilemma: she is computer illiterate, and is also distracted by the fact that she has finally found a thesis topic that she finds engaging. Against the advice of her advisor, she sets out to document the tragic life of Karl Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor---a brilliant woman who self-destructed during the course of a bad relationship. Meanwhile, her first day on the job Ella finds a lost ornithologist named Nigel Lark at the door. He is adorably disheveled and has a delicious accent and it is love at first sight. As their relationship quickly develops, however, it occurs to Ella that her own life is beginning to parallel the unfortunate path of her dissertation subject. For one thing, Nigel wears a wedding band on his left hand and he doesn't want to talk about it.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416552081
• ISBN13: 9781416552086
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Funny first novel about life as a graduate student

Read KARLMARX.COM, a first novel by Susan Coll . . . this funny tale is about a graduate student whose life is turned upside down by both her lover and employer . . . in addition, she is having troubles finishing her dissertation about Eleanor Marx (the youngest daughter of Karl) . . . eventually,the lives of the graduate student and Eleanor Marx run parallel tracks--and that is what makes this book so interesting to read.Also, Cool has a real feel for dialogue . . . and I found myself laughing out loud several times.There were many memorable passages; among them:That my parents did not approve of my flirtation with campus communism went without saying. But then it was tough to recall a time when any of my variously fleeting ideologies had earned their praise. Certainly not when,as an eleven-year-old, I had liberated all of the meat in our sub-zero freezerand fed it to the neighbor's dog in a zealous attack of vegetarianism. Nor did they show much enthusiasim when I became enamored of existentialism as a brooding high school junior and took to chain-smoking cigarettes and quoting Satre at dinner.My parents both stopped chewing and stared, enchanted. No one had ever complimented my mother on her cooking before. Eating my mother's cooking was simply something we tolerated, like having our teeth cleaned. I dared not tell them aobut the marriage proposal. My father would probably drop his fork and run directly to the phone to book the caterer.A picnic! I was thrilled. What child does not love a picnic? What child is not inordinately thrilled by the prospect of schlepping otherwise mundane food outside and then sitting on the ground and eating it while batting away bees and stomping on ants?

KarlMark.Com is a great title for a very good book!

Put this book on your summer reading list! Author Susan Coll's strength lies in her brilliant dialogue.