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Lavinia

Lavinia

Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses - David Lodge Incredibly amusing, alert, witty but unpretentious at the same time, though, being part of a campus novel trilogy, someone might expect a lot of academia breathing through its pages. The plot is quite obvious, due to the title, Philip (British) and Morris (American) are supposed to exchange places as English Literature professors for 6 months. But since life always takes us by surprise, they change not only positions and it's a good opportunity for Lodge to use his own experience in order to emphasize the cultural / mental differences between America and England.

While reading, I was a bit disappointed about the final chapter. He uses the film script format, with a lot of cuts, camera close-ups and focusing, which made it a bit difficult to follow. Now I see it as a last tribute to sunny California (read Hollywood) -not sure this was Lodge's intention, though- and with a little bit of imagination it turns out to be quite hilarious. Speaking of film scripts, besides the classical narrative, he also uses the epistolary style in one of the chapters, plus newspapers clippings in another - techniques which also gave dynamism to the novel.