THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE

A perpetually put-upon English professor is drafted to chaperone a student trip to England, with predictably disastrous if comical results.

Schumacher’s previous chronicles about the perils of academia—Dear Committee Members (2014) and The Shakespeare Requirement (2018)—levy herculean challenges upon Jason Fitger, our beleaguered hero, which are off-putting in their injustice if often laugh-out-loud hilarious. Fortunately, she seems to be easing up on Payne University’s least-favorite son, even if his high-strung superciliousness and propensity for accidents remain unchanged. In this third installment, Fitger has been recruited (read: blackmailed) to lead a three-week “Experience: Abroad” to London and other iconic U.K. locations during a soggy January excursion. His absence from home thankfully leads to less fretting about his academic standing at the backwater Midwestern college where he chairs the English department. However, Fitger is typically anxious about his ex-wife Janet Matthias’ potential job with a university in Chicago and her looming absence from his life. There are plenty of new oddballs to fill the space, as Fitger’s charges are a wonderfully weird mix of exiles from the Island of Misfit Toys. Payne University’s dirty dozen include a mismatched and hot-tempered couple, a student disappointed to learn he’s not on his way to the Caribbean, and a pair of artistic twins reminiscent of The Shining. On the more extreme end, Fitger finds himself the target of a prelaw student whose major requires study abroad, “which has historically been about young white Americans losing their virginity and learning how to use the salad fork.” He also worries about the delicacy of a future cat lady; mentors a goth-y undergrad and a juvenile delinquent; and ponders the whereabouts of a student so absent he’s found his way to mainland Europe. Along the way, Schumacher continues the series’ epistolatory theme with student essays about experiences ranging from the consumption of a Scotch egg to equally unsavory field trips to Oxford, Stonehenge, and Bath.

A satirical recipe that manages to turn sour, mismatched ingredients into something feather-light, affable, and sweet.