My Oxford Year takes a light, romantic tone and within it, explores weighty issues like serious illness, loss, grief, vulnerability, and offers a suitably complicated ending that doesn't wrap up life's messy loose ends in an unrealistically neat bow.
American Ella Durran has had a plan for her education and career sine she was 13: to study at Oxford.
Now she's 24, she's just as driven, and she's finally at Oxford.
In addition to branching out into studying literature across the pond, Ella has agreed to be an education policy consultant for a potential presidential candidate back home, which means she's on call at all hours. Her phone is always at hand, and if her bosses call, she drops everything to pick up and be a sounding board or a problem-solver.
Studying literature at Oxford means no syllabus, few concrete expectations, and a lot of winging it, all which is definitely out of Ella's comfort zone.
Her propensity for remaining emotionally closed off free up a lot of time. She's never been in a serious relationship and has no interest in one--she doesn't have time for frivolity when she's chasing so many goals.
When a meet-cute at a fish-and-chips shop shows her how foppish, obnoxious, and insufferable Oxonians can be, Ella feels even more lucky to have sworn off entanglements with men. Particularly men as handsome as the one who accidentally smashed into her sampling of chip sauces and ruined her white blouse.
But: oops! He turns out to be her professor! Oh, and soon she's sleeping with him! And oops again, their no-strings-attached agreement is quickly becoming complicated, serious, and full of facing life-and-death matters she never signed up for.
My Oxford Year is my favorite kind of romance; Whelan uses a light-fiction structure to take on seriously weighty issues like family dynamic struggles, commitment, loyalty, grief and loss, and cancer.
The happy ending that the tone of the novel seems to be assuring readers at the beginning morphs into a far more complex version of a resolved story by the end, with significant pain and yet glimmers of hope that transcend the immediate situation.
I loved the facing of mortality in the story--as well as the focus on literature and its power.
I listened to My Oxford Year as an audiobook--narrated by Julia Whelan herself.
More about Julia Whelan
Julia Whelan has been the audiobook narrator for over 600 books. The first novel she authored was Thank You for Listening.