Portia Nathan is in an unenviable position - as an Admissions Officer at Princeton University, she has the job of deciding to either fulfill or destroy people's dreams on a daily basis. The problem is is that Portia doesn't really have much of a life outside of the admissions process; she's so immersed in studying the lives of the people applying to Princeton that she has virtually cut herself off from a life outside of that institution. Obviously, there are some major reasons for why Portia is the way she is. The rest of the novel delves into that.
I enjoyed this book, though the prose was a bit wordy, though I guess when you're married to a well known and award winning poet (Paul Muldoon), you learn a thing or two about semantics. My one complaint is that I totally called the one "twist" near the end. I'm usually really bad at anticipating plot, so I'm not sure what that says about Korelitz's narrative. But overall, a solid read.
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