Offseason by Avigayl Sharp review wry comedy of a frazzled teacher

"She has lost touch with her friends, is hooked on prescription stimulants and cries too easily. She is also sexually uptight, which she attributes to childhood trauma, and weirdly obsessed with Joseph Stalin (his brutality, and his paranoia, reminded me very much of my mother)."

"The pupils at the school are brittle and entitled. One of them opines: This guy Kafka kept acting like everything was out of his control I thought, why don't you take a little initiative, buddy? Another let her head drop back against the window, exhausted from the effort of speech after uttering three sentences in a class discussion."

"They're not terribly keen on reading due to the devastating psychic effects of daily technological overstimulation so she assigns them Charles Dickens's 900-page novel, Bleak House. Offseason is a wryly funny portrait of an enervated psyche. The narrative voice is deadpan to the point of absurdity."

"On learning that the school's handyman is Bulgarian, the narrator who is of eastern European Jewish heritage offloads at length on intergenerational trauma. She thinks it might explain her mother's mania for purchasing obscene quantities of designer purses on clearance then forcing me to observe and praise each one in exaggerated terms, after which she would narrow her eyes and accuse me of wanting her to die so I could have all of the purses."

A 28-year-old literature teacher at a US girls’ boarding school feels unwell and disconnected, relying on prescription stimulants and crying easily. She attributes her sexual restraint to childhood trauma and becomes intensely preoccupied with Joseph Stalin’s brutality and paranoia. The students are brittle and entitled, offering dismissive remarks and showing exhaustion after minimal participation. They resist reading due to the psychic effects of constant technological overstimulation, so she assigns Bleak House. Her deadpan narration frames one-sided, intense conversations in ordinary settings. When she learns the handyman is Bulgarian, she connects it to intergenerational trauma and describes a mother who buys excessive designer purses and demands praise, then accuses her of wishing for death. The mother-daughter dynamic sharpens during end-of-term visits to her parents.

Read at www.theguardian.com