Monica Lewinsky, A Saint? This Devastatingly Smart Romance Goes There

First loves tin beryllium beautiful aliases traumatic, sometimes both. They are almost ever intense, pinch emotions connected velocity dial and hormones moving amok. Nothing for illustration nan durable consolations of late-life romance, but headier, much breathtaking and, successful nan worst cases, acold much damaging.

Even decades later, Jean Dornan, nan protagonist of Julia Langbein’s smart, poignant and involving caller “Dear Monica Lewinsky,” can’t recollect her ain first emotion successful tranquility. Its after-effects person derailed her life, and an unexpected email invitation to be a status statement successful France honoring her erstwhile person sends her into a tailspin.

An agitated Jean finds herself praying to nary different than Monica Lewinsky, nan patron saint of bad romanticist choices, aliases arsenic Langbein puts it, “of those who suffer venal nationalist shaming and patriarchal cruelty.” In Langbein’s comic, but besides deadly serious, imagination, this is nary specified metaphor. The martyred Monica has virtually been transfigured into a saint. And why not? Surely, she has suffered capable to qualify.

Jean and Monica person successful communal a disastrous liaison pinch an attractive, powerful, joined older man. Monica was humiliated, reviled, past simply defined by her missteps. Meanwhile, her arguably much culpable intersexual partner survived impeachment, retained some his governmental fame and his matrimony and enjoyed a lucrative post-presidency.

Jean’s little fling during nan summertime of 1998 coincided pinch nan nationalist airing of Monica’s doomed romance. Jean’s passion took a much backstage toll, but she still lives pinch what Monica calls “this deepening suspicion that your beingness is simply a remnant of an arena agelong since concluded.”

Though framed by a fantastical conceit, “Dear Monica Lewinsky” is astatine its halfway a realist novel, influenced by nan feminism of #MeToo and precise successful its delineation of characteristic and place. Langbein’s Monica — having yet transcended her past and ascended to belief omniscience — becomes Jean’s interlocutor. Together, they relive nan fateful weeks that Jean spent studying nan Romanesque churches of medieval France and charming David Harwell, nan Rutgers University medieval creation professor co-leading nan summertime program.

Every now and again, Monica, arsenic overmuch savvy therapist arsenic all-knowing seer, interrupts Jean’s first-person relationship to connection guidance. Threaded done nan narrative, arsenic opposition and commentary, is simply a martyrology of female saints. These colloquially rendered portraits, reflecting a punitive, patriarchal morality, picture girls and women who would alternatively strengthen torture aliases moreover decease than sully their intersexual purity — stories truthful utmost that they look satirical.

The portraits play disconnected nan novel’s milieu: a bid of churches, arsenic good arsenic nan medieval French castle that is location to an eccentric and mostly absent prince. The inferior of belief doctrine and believe is different of nan book’s themes. One postgraduate student, Patrick, is simply a devoted Roman Catholic, unquestioning successful his faith. Others are simply devout enthusiasts of medieval architecture. Judith, a doctoral campaigner astatine Harvard, has an addiction of her own: an eating upset that threatens to disable her.

A rising inferior astatine Rutgers, Jean is 1 of conscionable 2 undergraduates successful nan program. Her first dull, daunting task involves measuring and different assessing nan churches’ “apertures” — windows and doors. Later, she is assigned to collaborate connected a guidebook and constitute a word paper.

A connection awesome unversed successful art, architecture aliases medieval history, Jean feels overwhelmed astatine times. But she does person useful talents: fluent French and nan expertise to conjure delicious Sunday dinners for her bedazzled colleagues. (The writer of nan 2023 caller “American Mermaid,” Langbein has some a doctorate successful creation history and a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for nutrient writing, and her expertise successful some fields is evident.)

As nan summertime wanes, Jean’s fixation connected David grows. Langbein excels astatine depicting nan obsessive quality of illicit, unfulfilled desire — really it swamps judgement and conscionable astir everything else. A quarter-century Jean’s senior, David is trying to decorativeness a stalled book project, laboring successful nan protector of his much prolific and successful wife, Ann. An master connected nan erotically charged belief life of nuns and nan creation it produced, she shows up concisely successful nan communicative and past conveniently disappears.

David is smooth, seductive and, to 19-year-old Jean, acold much appealing than nan fumbling schoolboys she has known. But he turns retired to beryllium nary much grown-up aliases emotionally mature. After nan flirtation and its consummation, David thumps a hasty (and unsurprising) retreat. Then he does thing worse: He allows his guilt to shred his integrity.

In nan aftermath of that summer, a wounded Jean stumbles done her past 2 years of college, “berserk, unfocused, humiliating.” She abandons her world and profession ambitions, takes a occupation arsenic a tribunal interpreter, and marries Michael, an affable caregiver who has small thought of her affectional burdens.

Then that invitation, inspiring “a racy heat,” arrives, and Jean must determine whether to face her past aliases support moving from it. Is location really overmuch of a choice? Fortunately, she has nan saintly Monica arsenic her guide. More clear-eyed now, Jean must cull her martyrdom and reclaim her ain truth and agency. If she does, David, astatine slightest successful nan realm of nan imagination, whitethorn yet get his comeuppance.

Klein, a three-time finalist for nan National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence successful Reviewing, is simply a taste newsman and professional successful Philadelphia.