Overheads - Softcover

Oakley, Ann

3.17

6 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0006512186 ISBN 13: 9780006512189

Publisher: Flamingo, 2000

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A black, bleak comedy of contemporary campus chaos.

Acronyms, committees and statistics abound at the University of East Midlands, a vast net to entrap the unwary ambitions of its hapless academics, who are forced to run the gauntlet of budgetary pressures and even management consultants under the sinister and manipulative eye of EMU’s V-C Sir Stanley Oxborrow before they can even begin the business of research and teaching. Sexual predators and lounge lizards are the least of the worries that afflict Professor Lydia Malinder and her colleagues; in the university of today they have to justify their existence on a daily basis.

Ann Oakley’s new novel is a lightly handled but nevertheless intense debunking of the horrors of contemporary university life, and one that, in these days of ‘education, education, education’, would be eminently publicisable.

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Review:

‘Bleakly funny’
Marie Claire

‘Witty and worringly recognisable’
Good Housekeeping

‘Sly, academic comedy of campus life’
Harpers & Queen

From the Back Cover:

Acronyms, committees and statistics abound at the University of the East Midlands (known as EMU) where hapless academics are entrapped, their ideals and ambitions crushed, and they are forced to battle against budgetary pressures and management consultants before they can even begin the business of research and teaching. Sexual predators and lounge lizards are the least of the worries that afflict Professor Lydia Mallinder and her colleagues, who have to justify their existence on a daily basis, while the sinister and manipulative vice-chancellor, Sir Stanley Oxborrow, looks on.

Lydia has other problems, too. Should she allow her feelings for her lover, the sexy but ambitious – and married – Professor Krest, to stand in the way of her career? Is going to bed with the fresh young management consultant likely to compromise her fight to retain funding for her department? Can it really be possible that a supremely rational, intelligent and successful academic could begin to believe that she is being stalked – by a panther?

'Overheads' is a dark comedy which lays bare the horrors of contemporary life, and wryly amusing look at the pressures which afflict men and women working in the academic system.

'Bleakly funny'
MARIE CLAIRE

'Witty and worryingly recognisable'
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

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