Susan McKeever reviews The Favourite, by Rosemary Hennigan
The Favourite|Rosemary Hennigan|Orion
by Susan McKeever
The familiar East-Coast American universe of academia is vividly evoked throughout this page-turner, the second novel from Dublin-based author Rosemary Hennigan. We feel the crunching maple leaves underfoot, taste the warm cider, revel in the centuries-old buildings, the vaulted ceilings and the statues of luminaries such as Benjamin Franklin. We picture leather satchels and carefully draped college scarfs. It’s an enticing setting in which Hennigan sets the stage.
We feel the crunching maple leaves underfoot, taste the warm cider, revel in the centuries-old buildings, the vaulted ceilings and the statues of luminaries
Into this world of Franklin University, Philadelphia, enters our protagonist, Jessica Mooney-Flynn, continuing her law education begun in Trinity College, Dublin with a Law and Literature Masters. The real reason she’s here is to take one of the coveted places in the legendary Professor Jay Crane’s class – a professor who also taught her sister, Audrey, on a visiting term in Trinity. Only six students make the cut each year. We know from the outset that Jessica (or Jessie) is not there to enhance her knowledge, but to become Crane’s ‘favourite’ – an honour he notoriously bestows on one student in his niche class, opening career and academic opportunities for them with a golden key.
But this particular need for favourite status is not career-led; it’s a means to an end for Jessie to entrap the charismatic professor. The other five characters in the class are not well developed, apart from the born-with-a-silver-spoon, reeking-with-old-money, destined-for-a-career-in-politics Charlie Duke, who becomes an unlikely friend and ally.
At this early point, we know that Crane caused Jessie’s sister to suffer. Just how much is revealed eventually: following a deeply damaging relationship with him, this bright young star dropped out of college, went travelling to Central America, only to return home in a sealed coffin, gardaí at the front door of the family’s Malahide home announcing that the worst had happened. After reading Audrey’s diary, emails and phone messages when her belongings were returned, Jessie is convinced that Crane was indirectly responsible for her death.
The author’s knowledge of the legal system through her own extensive studies at Trinity and University of Pennsylvania shines through
Jessie’s attendance in room 1.04B for his first class of the semester is the starting point of an obsessively planned campaign to take Crane down, ruin his life, get revenge. His first words to his students? ‘Welcome to the best class you’ll ever take,’ – he’s well aware of his cult status. The author’s knowledge of the legal system through her own extensive studies at Trinity and University of Pennsylvania shines through, especially in her descriptions of lively debates in Crane’s hallowed class.
Questions of the meaning of justice are explored through literary figures such as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ The Eumenides; in the latter Jessie is affronted at the irony that Crane is ‘furious’ about the Athenian justice system being so unfavourable to women. Then there is the backdrop of the 2016 election which saw the misogynist Trump beat Hillary Clinton, shocking womankind and spurring protests countrywide. It all ties neatly into the theme of a woman wronged.
Questions of the meaning of justice are explored through literary figures such as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ The Eumenides
Over time, Jessie doggedly pursues her professor, buttering him up, challenging him and proving her intellectual worth, eventually injecting flirtation into their exchanges. It’s not long before Jay Crane is signing his emails to her with a J x, just like he did with Audrey. It is uncomfortable to witness this obsessive compulsion of the protagonist, and I was stupefied at some of the lengths she goes to, especially around Crane’s home, and his ‘dark-haired’ wife Leyna (quoted description because it’s mentioned too many times for my liking).
The unstoppable pace of The Favourite amply deserves the page-turner moniker; I read it in two days, and Jessie’s grief for her unfortunate sister was as raw at the end as it was at the beginning.
Susan McKeever is an editor, writer and ghostwriter for several Irish and international publishers and authors. She works from her home in the red-brick heart of Dublin’s Portobello. @MckeeverSusan, susanmckeever.biz
