09-08-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Steamy Campus Novel Rife With Infidelity
SEDUCTION THEORY, by Emily Adrian
Just the idea of distilling Emily Adrian's cheeky new novel, 'Seduction Theory,' into a pithy elevator pitch makes my head hurt. Then again, I've always gravitated toward books that resist easy categorization. Among other things, this tour de force is a campus novel, a love story, a coming-of-age narrative, a satire, a performance piece, an M.F.A. exposé, a trove of literary references and a primer on writing.
Though this is Adrian's sixth book, it brims with the self-assured audacity behind nearly every great debut. This makes a certain amount of sense, as the body of 'Seduction Theory' purports to be a graduate thesis written and submitted by Roberta 'Robbie' Green, an M.F.A. student at the country's 'sixth-best fully funded' program, at Edwards University in upstate New York.
It is also the means by which Robbie — a plucky Mr. Ripley without the instinct to murder but with a killer facility for language — seeks to expose the bad behavior of Ethan, the husband of the creative writing department's star scholar, Simone, who is both Robbie's faculty adviser and, more important, her crush.
Robbie, as our guide, doesn't present herself until the second chapter. Instead, she uses the first several pages to warp our perspective from a seemingly third-person perspective, buying our confidence as she sets the plot in motion: The department's 'it' couple — believed by everyone, including themselves, to be deliriously happy — are both dangerously close to infidelity.
Ethan, an untenured faculty member 'whose pedagogy skewed teddy bear,' is weirdly tempted by the department's secretary, Abigail, who 'could have been beautiful if there had been someone there to let her nap every minute of her life.' Meanwhile, Simone, with 'her 54,000 followers, her cheekbones, … her ability to run a sub-six-minute mile and her forthcoming scholarship on nonmonogamy in the 21st century,' appears to be a little too fond of Robbie, or at least more open to Robbie's obvious interest than she should be.
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