Karlmarx.com: A Love Story

By Susan Coll

Book Overview

Ella Kennedy is in a rut. Nearly thirty, she's at risk of becoming both a perpetual graduate student and a continual failure at relationships. After spending three years at Columbia University ripping up outlines for her thesis topic of Marxist scholarship, she takes 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 both computer illiterate and distracted by a thesis topic that she finds engaging. Against her advisor's wishes, she sets out to document the tragic life of Karl Marx's daughter Eleanor -- a brilliant woman who fell apart during the course of a bad relationship. Meanwhile, Ella meets Nigel Lark, an adorably disheveled ornithologist with a delicious British accent; it is love at first sight. But as their relationship develops, Ella realizes that her own life is starting to mirror Eleanor's. For one thing, Nigel wears a wedding band and he doesn't want to talk about it... Deftly weaving fact and fiction, past and present, socialist theory and side-splitting humor, Susan Coll presents a warm and witty novel in the tradition of Cathleen Schine, Laura Zigman, and the Ephron sisters. karlmarx.com is a love story full of wonderful absurdities.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743200039
• ISBN13: 9780743200035
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 254 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.8"

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.