Word: nicely
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...then there are those conservation-minded writers who try to squeeze fiction, criticism and metacriticism into a single volume. Nice Work, the newest novel by the British writer and English professor David Lodge, is the result of just such an effort...
Like its predecessors, Changing Places and Small World, Nice Work is both a novel and an ironic commentary on itself. Along the way, Lodge also manages to take a few jabs at the 19th century industrial novel, the state of 20th century literary criticism and the lyrics of pop singer Jennifer Rush...
...takes place in roughly the same universe as Lodge's prior two novels: the imaginary campus of Rummidge University in England. But unlike the two earlier works, which ranged over the entire globe, Nice Work confines itself almost entirely to the city of Rummidge, which, as the author explains, "occupies, for the purposes of fiction, the space where Birmingham is to be found on maps of the so-called real world...
...while Changing Places and Small "campus" novels, that description only half fits Nice Work. This novel concerns itself as much with the world of industry as with acadamia, as Lodge sets up a modern parallel to the world of 19th century industrial novels...
...Reading Nice Work simply for the story is a waste of time. The characters are almost entirely one-dimensional. After introducing Vic and Robyn in the first section of the book, Lodge simply turns them loose--they almost automatically begin to lose their disrespect for one another, become friends and wind...