SOURCE: Espey, John. “Life and Lust in Academia.” Chicago Tribune (27 September 1987): section 14, p. 7.

In the following review, Espey compares and contrasts the academic setting of Breakers with Coral Lansbury's Felicity.

The academic novel has evolved into a number of subspecies. In its American aspect, probably the most popular of these has become the record of the visitor from abroad who examines with a slightly superior eye the institutions of the New World.

Felicity and Breakers represent the extremes of the form. The former is a splendidly impure farce, the latter, an ironically moody-exercise in introspection.

At first blush, Felicity would seem to be a home-grown product. Coral Lansbury, a Victorian specialist who has written on Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Trollope, is dean at Rutgers’ Camden College. But Felicity Norman herself is the very prototype of the sexually generous, slightly blowsy English girl that your legendary Oxford landlady was...