Rates of Exchange

This one is written pleasantly enough, but it has not aged well. In "Rates of Exchange," our hero, a professor who deBy als with less-than-pressing linguistic controversies at a third-rate British university, finds himself somewhat adrift during a two-week visit to an invented but vaguely Balkan Soviet satellite. Adventures with an irresponsible Foreign Office couple, an alluring, vaguely hippie-ish dissident writer, and, inevitably, his official guide, who easily slots herself into the role of a strict-but-fond mother, follow. By the time that this one came out, I can't imagine that most of the satire here hit too hard, and the dissident writer's impassioned paean to creative spontaneity seems a trifle romantic in the second decade in show more the twenty-first century. One gets the idea that "Rates of Exchange" is supposed to be about one rather bored British man's reawakening after a quiet midlife crisis, but Pettworth, our protagonist, is seldom interesting enough to sustain our interest, even in that context. How he manages to attract the amorous attentions of the Eastern European women he meets is another question without any real answers, though the relationship between him and his guide is left ambiguous enough -- and drawn well enough -- to give us a reason to keep reading. "Rates of Exchange" is good enough for a plane or a beach, but only just. Thank God I read it in quarantine. show less

I found this novel entertaining and enjoyable, given its academic protagonist on an European academic jaunt. Plausible and humorous barely-satirical situations worthy of a quiet afternoon read.