Over at prawfs, Howard Wasserman has beaten me to the announcement of Lisa McElroy's novel, Called On, which was published on Friday. Cribbing now from the description:
Libby Behl and Connie Shun are both at Warren Law because they want to make the world better. First-year student Libby’s got a lot to learn about law — not to mention love, long nights, and low-grade coffee. Through a difficult year, her professor Connie starts to question what she knows about how law — and justice — work. Witty and insightful, Called On is an insider’s peek into the struggles of learning law and the satisfaction of finding a new path in life
I haven't yet had the chance to read this, but The National Law Journal says “Called On may be this generation’s One L…” All of which means I need to read this soon, because I loved One L when I read it the summer after my first year. I recall thinking, wow, those same personalities were all in my class, too! There's something pretty interesting about the use of novels as a way of advancing the case for reform. Obviously my antebellum southerners did that a bunch — but so have a lot of people in more recent times. DuBois tried it without much success. More recently Derrick Bell used fiction; as Stacey Gahagan and I wrote, some readers had a difficult time understanding and explaining it. And some years ago I wrote about Columbia Law Professor George Fletcher's novel The Bond.
As I say, I'm looking forward to reading this!