By Dahl Botterill
Nick McDonell burst onto the literary scene when he was only 17 years old with his debut novel Twelve. It wasn't perfect, but it was very good, even without factoring in the age of its author. Composed of tight and efficient prose reminiscent of Hemingway, it took an up-close look at the intersection between privilege, violence, and drugs. There is an almost journalistic sense of immediacy that made it feel particularly real, and this sense of saturation is something that survived his journey into adulthood.
An Expensive Education, published in 2009, showcases a more experienced writer, and a more experienced human being as well. The characters are a little older, and the setting has grown to encompass the world, but that immediacy is still very present. While the setting of this more-than-a-spy story is very much international, its core revolves around Harvard University—it's the sun around which all the varied characters spin. This core presents another link to McDonell's previous work, in that there is a lot of privilege at work here. As in Twelve, privilege and entitlement aren't universal aspects of the cast of characters, but it provides the framework through which they often interrelate.
An Expensive Education follows several very different characters over the course of its duration. Michael Teak is a Harvard-educated spy, present for the death of a revolutionary named Hatashil and the destruction of a village at the indirect hands of his government. Susan Lowell is a Harvard professor who's just won the Pulitzer for her book about that same revolutionary. Her student David grew up in the aforementioned village while his girlfriend uses her privilege in occasionally misguided attempts to do good while furthering her own prospects. Attempts that will eventually lead her to Teak as well. These characters are surrounded by more students, more professors, more academics and pundits, and shadowy puppet masters.
There are a lot of people to keep track of, and a lot going on, and if An Expensive Education has a weakness, it's that one may find themselves far more interested in what happened to some of these characters than to others. Both in the sense of the plot and characters, the political intrigue is occasionally more interesting than the various machinations of the young American elite, but neither aspect is a total miss, and each certainly benefits from the inclusion of the other. On some level, it's telling a slightly different story than it seems to be, and that is perhaps what makes this book something special. There might not be very many authors that could make both war-torn countries and Harvard campuses feel so lived in; McDonell manages to do both while connecting the two via strands of uniquely terse prose, weaving a signature momentum into the tale.