Amy P. Knight

Not his best work. A failed actor/waiter takes an adult education class and becomes obsessed with his teacher. They keep in touch, and after she dies, she leaves him her books and papers, and he does a lot of research on the historical figure who seemed to enthrall her, Julian (huh) the apostate, the last pagan emperor. Unfortunately, the entire middle section of the book is the uninspired essay he writes about that. What a slog. The interesting bits were the personal moments, of which there were far too few to make a whole novel.