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I first read Michael Gerber's Freshman, a bizarre, over-the-top parody of college life, the summer before I started college.

Terrible idea. Instead of making me excited for college, it made me depressed that my college experience would totally never compare.

What I would compare Freshman to is Scrubs. Granted, Scrubs is funny and Freshman is hysterical, but both are comedies that parody an establishment (hospital, Ivy League college) using bizarre scenarios (see the clip, read the book), but still manage to have complex, likable characters and hit upon real truths.

For a taste of the hilarity, check out the Stutts University (the setting of the book) website. It's also laugh-out-loud hilarious.

And now, as promised, my small contribution to try to garner interest for my favorite at-risk books: copying and pasting a review I already wrote about the book for a publishing interview. I know, I know. It's too much effort, it borders on heroic... but please, hold your applause.

"When Hart Fox’s acceptance at prestigious, Ivy League Stutts University is hijacked by local millionaire Burlington Darling, who buys a new boathouse in exchange for his son Trip’s acceptance, Hart is forced into a raw deal to attend his dream school. Mr. Darling will get him in and pay his way, but Hart must keep blockhead Trip out of trouble and take all his classes so that Trip won’t ruin his father’s bid for governor. Yet Trip is only a part of Hart’s bizarre freshman year; Hart must learn to navigate the strange Stutts culture, his first relationship, and help his new friends resurrect a scorned and almost obsolete humor magazine.

Freshman is laugh-out-loud hilarious, a strength so overpowering that one might at first not realize the numerous other merits that not only make the novel so funny, but give it satisfying substance: blunt, deft prose, a fully formed plot, and complex, well-drawn characters. Freshman’s humor often manifests itself in the bizarre, but not to the point of throwing readers out of the story, for two reasons: matter-of-fact prose and truths that underlie even the most off-the-wall situations, such as the fact that Mr. Darling’s political opponent is a dog due to a paperwork error. Gerber’s blunt style never acknowledges the impossibility of the events, firmly establishing the rules of the world in which the story takes place: “Mr. Darling entered the race thinking that it would be a slam dunk, but the dog, a Boston Terrier, was awfully cute” (27). The truths hidden in each wacky scenario continue to assuage skepticism, as well as making the impossible plot relatable (and more funny for it).The truths regard society (like the public’s love for cute animals), friendship (when angry with his best friend, a character cheers himself by pondering his friend’s numerous failings), and, of course, the university system. Stutts’ campus is crumbling because of the effort to make it look older (an effort only applied after mass time travel failed), there is a building named “Center for People Who Give Us Money,” and Trip’s fraternity is Comma Comma Apostrophe. Though no college student can literally have the Stutts experience, most can relate to Gerber’s hilarious definition of a safety school, “Someplace you’d rather kill yourself than attend, but your parents make you apply to anyway” (11), Hart’s disgust with running into now-chummy high school enemies over break, and obnoxious housemates.

The plot keeps driving to the end, making the reader want to keep reading not only for amusement, but to find out what happens to Hart, his friends, and their humor magazine. The characters aid in this, for while some are caricatured for humor, the main characters are complex, fully developed, and easy to care about. Smart, funny, and polite Hart desires to belong, worries that he cares more about his girlfriend than she does for him, and is desperate to hang onto his friends and life at Stutts. Hart’s best friend, Peter, is in a wheelchair after a high school football accident, and is still dealing with his situation underneath his witty, irreverent, devil-may-care attitude (like not being able to play football at Stutts, and not being able to get a date due to his disability). Yet part of him is glad that the accident occurred, for it saved him from the clichéd path of his successful but ultimately unhappy upper-class family, though Peter himself takes his extreme wealth for granted. Even Biff and Beekman, freshmen who attempt to murder Hart multiple times to win a bet, are impossible to dislike, with hilarious neuroses and situations that make their actions almost understandable.

Michael Gerber’s fully formed plot, complex, well-drawn characters, blunt, clever prose, and flowing structure, make Freshman a must-read, even if you will lament that your college experience didn’t compare."

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