Library Journal
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In his latest novel, Downing returns to English professor Mark Sternum, who appeared in his earlier Perfect Agreement. The setting is again prestigious, north-of-Boston Hellman College, with events taking place between the start of spring semester and spring break. Sternum is teaching a creative writing seminar along with the tenured faculty member and well-known writer he simply calls “The Professor.” He leads a hermitlike life, alone in a North Shore apartment while his often absent partner, Paul, does relief work in the Mediterranean. The love referenced in the book’s title is partly that between Mark and Paul but is much more than between a teacher and his students. At its core, the novel concerns Mark’s interactions with his students and what goes on in the classroom —“that fragile home for possibility,” as he calls it. VERDICT An impeccably written novel of academic life, filled with gentle jabs at the foibles and eccentricities of contemporary college students and the frustrations of dealing with one’s colleagues, this work is a paean to teaching, the writing process, and the craft of storytelling. While its brevity can make it seem slight, its heft is in its heart.—Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly
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Downing's witty follow-up to Perfect Agreement satisfyingly transports readers to college as teacher Mark Sternum begins winter term at Hellman College in New England. Mark's highly acclaimed creative writing class is filled with 12 students, yet hopefuls line the classroom to listen to the writer's workshop. Mark jointly teaches with the Professor, a distant man whom the students fear as much as they feel at ease with Sternum. This term is challenging for Mark as he tries to fill the void left by Paul, his partner of 30 years who is currently overseas, by staying at Paul's condo more than in his own house. The students, meanwhile, dissect each other's work and try to sort out their lives. Mark takes an interest in Anton, a student whom he learns is battling cancer. In addition to focusing on his own writing, Mark stresses over an important departmental report, and even though he's tenured, he likes to please and allows union meetings to be held in his office. In depicting Mark's ordinary semester, Downing poignantly illustrates the dynamics of the college classroom as well as its potential for lasting lessons, making for a resonant campus novel. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

Mark Sternum teaches a prestigious writing workshop at Hellman College, leading 12 students through technical exercises designed to expose the universal truths of good writing. Like most teachers, Mark has complicated relationships with his peers, his students, and the course work itself. In addition to his usual struggles around grading, counseling students, and making time for his own projects, Mark's personal life hasn't been the picture of tranquility. He and his longtime partner, Paul, separated six months ago, and he feels unmoored. Leading readers through a semester's worth of writing assignments, literary criticism, and personal reflection, Downing (The Chapel, 2015) explores Mark's dissatisfaction with the world around him. Though this is a stand-alone, Downing's loyal readers will appreciate the depth and breadth of Mark's character arc more than 20 years after his introduction, in Perfect Agreement (1997). Depicting striving adjuncts, grade-grubbing students, and smug professors, Downing fearlessly pokes at the least glamorous aspects of academia. Fans of Richard Russo, Francine Prose, and Julie Schumacher's Dear Committee Members (2014) will enjoy Downing's clear-eyed view from the ivory tower.--Stephanie Turza Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A creative writing professor soldiers through a semester, uncertain of his own capacity to write or teach.This sequel to Downing's 1997 novel, Perfect Agreement, revisits Mark, a teacher at a Massachusetts college who guides a clutch of undergrads through the essentials of point of view, style, and metaphor. But he lacks much in the way of authority or even assertiveness. He cedes much of the control of the writing workshop to an unnamed professor with whom he co-teaches it, feels listless at home (his partner is working overseas), and is growing weary of both academic bureaucracy (he's procrastinating on writing an assigned memo for a committee he serves on) and intramural tensions (the adjuncts are organizing). All of this lassitude gives the novel a distinct lack of body heat, especially in the early chapters, where much of the narrative excitement comes from the peculiarities of Mark's writing exercises: Write a scene using only one-syllable words, write about a car crash that kills a person, etc. Eventually the book snaps into the seriocomic groove that the campus novel typically demands, from Mark's struggle to complete his own assignments to his hailing an Uber that turns out to be driven by one of the college's ill-paid adjuncts. Some late-breaking plot twists, involving an ailing student and the professor's true identity, shed some light on Mark's disconnection from himself. But the prevailing mood is ambivalence: "You could call this fear of success or fear of failure. You could say that Mark was embarrassed by his ambitions or unequal to them." That kind of wheel-spinning drains the action from the story. And as any writing teacher will tell you, the success of a story rests on the action that its central character brings to it.Downing sets the town-and-gown scenery well, but there's an irony in a hero advocating for active writing in such a static environment. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.