Professor Jason Fitger returns for another academic misadventure

Jason Fitger may be the last faculty member the dean wants for the job, but he’s the only professor available to chaperone Payne University’s annual “Experience: Abroad” (he has long been on the record objecting to the absurd and gratuitous colon between the words) occurring during the three weeks of winter term. Among his charges are a claustrophobe with a juvenile detention record, a student who erroneously believes he is headed for the Caribbean, a pair of unreconciled lovers, a set of undifferentiated twins, and one young woman who has never been away from her cat before.

Through a sea of troubles — personal, institutional, and international — the gimlet-eyed, acid-tongued Fitger strives to navigate safe passage for all concerned, revealing much about the essential need for human connection and the sometimes surprising places in which it is found.

This is one of my most-anticipated novels of the year. The first two in the series — Dear Committee Members and The Shakespeare Requirement — are superb, and among my favourite reads of their respective release years, but also (in the case of the first) more generally. As I had no doubt that I would, I really enjoyed this. Continue reading →