5/20/2023 0 Comments The Student by Cary FaganShe is ten years Miriam’s junior, but that may be close enough. My mother, then: she’s Jewish, graduated from University College, and grew up middle-class near Forest Hill in Toronto, just like Miriam. My grandmother, maybe? No, too old (and too dead). Someone who can attest to the horror of this sexism and anti-Semitism. I have to find someone the same age as Miriam, born in the late 1930s. As a Jew, the subtext reads, she stands no chance of a professorship outside of University College, and as a woman, no chance anywhere at all. Is this what really happened? “You certainly can’t expect to be hired by any of the other colleges,” her professor says in so many words. I make a note in the margins: I must ask someone. “No, no, I mean whatever do you want to do a PhD for? To spend several years of your life, not to mention the valuable resources of this university, for nothing?” “Well, to do my Masters and then my PhD.” He avoided looking at her but took the pipe from his mouth. It is the 1950s, and she has asked her professor for a recommendation letter: Miriam Moscowitz, the main character of Cary Fagan’s new book, The Student, is in her final year studying English at the University of Toronto. I am sitting on the subway, reading with horror and fascination.
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