Rating: 
Summary: Two professors, 1969, sex, hippies..what more could you ask?
Review: David Lodge's clever story of two literature professors, both part of a mindless faculty exchange, brings the tumult and craziness of the college in the 1960's era to life. Before political correctness and sexual harassment there was free speech, student protests, and women's liberation, and Lodge deftly recreates for the reader the insane glories of those years.The story opens on flights and lives traveling in quite oppostie directions in January 1969. We learn something about the protagonists en route. Loosely disguised state universities in California and England serve as the temporary homes for our heroes, professors Zapp and Swallow. The former well-respected, well-paid and well-fed, the latter just tryig to hang on. Their exchange experiences mirror one another in many respects, and soon the left-behind wives and children are part of their new lives. Lodge uses letters, news articles, narrative and a movie script to shine the spotlight on academe. Clever twists and observations on the times make this a fast, fun read.
Rating: 
Summary: Great send-up of British & American campuses of the '60s!
Review: Having been a college student during the '60s at a college much like Euphoria, and during the '70s at a school much like Rummidge, I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting both locations at once. I listened to this tape while hiking around the neighborhood, and kept seeing neighbors looking at me with amusement as I broke out in frequent audible laughter. Paul Shelley performs his usual tour de force reading. He amazes me. No matter how many accents and characters he has to mix up in this salad, he keeps them all straight and identifiable, even in the midst of natural-speed conversation interspersed with narration. This particular book was undoubtedly more challenging than most for him, yet he makes it all sound effortless. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to exercise and not notice how the time flies!
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: I first encountered David Lodge in Therpay which encourged me to read the rest of his novels. Changing places may be 25 years old, but the image of British Academia has little changed since. A wrtier with a great sense of humour, amazing style and betwitching imagery, Lodge has succeeded in encompassing all aspects of academic life in Britain between two covers. I enjoyed it immensly.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny and enjoyable but also flawed
Review: I have read this book after its successor "Small World" which I enjoyed very much. And even if it is quite entertaining it does not reach up to the later novel - not at all. It was nice to observe the two protagonists Swallow and Zapp trying to adapt to the way of life at an American respectively British university in the 60s. In describing and satirizing the academic world Lodge is at his best. But having him experimenting with the novel (newspaper clippings make up the center part of the book, a film-script the end) did not seem very convincing in this context. Where the story should really take off it becomes downright boring through this technique. Pale in comparison to "Small World" and "Nice Work", the third book in the series.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and enjoyable but also flawed
Review: I have read this book after its successor "Small World" which I enjoyed very much. And even if it is quite entertaining it does not reach up to the later novel - not at all. It was nice to observe the two protagonists Swallow and Zapp trying to adapt to the way of life at an American respectively British university in the 60s. In describing and satirizing the academic world Lodge is at his best. But having him experimenting with the novel (newspaper clippings make up the center part of the book, a film-script the end) did not seem very convincing in this context. Where the story should really take off it becomes downright boring through this technique. Pale in comparison to "Small World" and "Nice Work", the third book in the series.
Rating:
Summary: A tale of humiliation...and hilarity
Review: I read this on the train to New Jersey and back in January, and I'm sure my fellow passengers were looking at me strangely, because I was snorting and saying, "ha!" Maybe it's just being around academics again, but I found this novel extremely funny, and I probably will search out more Lodge based on it. The idea is simple: two professors, one at a small college in England, the other at a huge conglomerate in California, switch places for an academic year. The English professor, who is barely scraping by, longs for the materialism of American society; the American professor, on the verge of divorce, is trying to get his wife to see past his infidelities and acknowledge his worth as a husband. But people are people all over, and while both professors undergo quite a bit of culture shock, and cause some culture shock in the academic societies that they become a part of, the real story here is that it is a small world after all (hmm, funny that, but Small World is the name of the sequel to this novel. One of the best sections of this novel is the depiction of a game called Humiliation, wherein you must name a novel that you have not read, but that you expect everyone else at the table/party to have read. The idea is that by admitting not having read a canonical text (especially among Literature scholars) you will be humiliated. It's the kind of intellectual party game that Seinfeld watchers just can't join in on, because it assumes a sophistication. Either that, or it's just snobbery. The other thing that raises this story about similar counterparts (including Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim, which I liked, but not as much as this novel) is the clever way in which it shifts form within the story. For example, section three is done entirely epistolary, while the ending is written in screenplay format. The novel is also self-reflecting, in a wry sort of metafictional way. You know that you're reading a story, and the story knows that you are reading it, but instead of pressing the point as in some of the more aggressive post-modern works, it does some sly winks and nods in the general direction of the reader.
Rating: 
Summary: A light-hearted farce that doesn't quite work
Review: I was recently directed toward David Lodge's work by a friend when I told him of my unfulfilled quest for a really good satirical academic novel. This one looked fairly promising at first, but quickly turned into a sort of lame romantic comedy centering around two English instructors (who exhange positions for a semester - one in the UK and one in the States) and their respective wives. It has it's amusing moments and the writing is good, but in the end it seems to have gone nowhere... In summary I found this to be a somewhat enjoyable light-hearted read, but ultimately a very forgettable book.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read novel!
Review: I would like to add a few sentences to the previous review. It is a main feature of the book that it is
supposed to happen at the end of the 60's, at the middle of the beat-age. I recently talked to a British
academic who claimed that lot's of things had changed on the Campus of Rummage since Lodge
wrote the novel. It might be far from accurate, yet one of the most entertaining novels I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: Changing Places more of a universal swaperoo
Review: It is obvious that Lodge is looking at the tumultuous student movements and blossoming women's movements of the late 60's from a critical distance. Both are satirized in this novel; but it is primarily concerned with exposing the inherent differences between British and American Academia and poking fun at the upper echelons of the ivory tower of English literature. The student movements serve merely as a backdrop for the mid-life crises of Lodge's main characters. This is the story of Morris Zapp, an American professor of English literature and Jane Austen expert, and Philip Swallow, his English counterpart. They undertake an academic exchange between their respective universities, and swap more than just their positions, as their personal lives become intertwined in a typical Lodgian move: all things are connected. This is an intelligent book, full of interesting if not improbable plot twists. The dialogue is witty, the prose full of brilliant and well-used ten cent words to build a vocabulary on. It is not laugh out loud funny, but snicker out the side of your mouth humor. The experimental part at the end is a bit misshapen and very disappointing, especially for the reader, who comes to care about his characters. And yet this is about something much bigger, especially for the academic. These are men who are trying to make their way in a world where publish or perish is the only mantra. Their respective crises are coupled with new couplings on both sides of the Atlantic, and a new view on life--all they needed was a change of place. They seem to have discovered how much there is to gain by leaving that which you know. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that belief, this is most unfortunate for the marriages in discussion, but in the end, aren't the women also better off? We can't know. He leaves us hanging. This is a great novel for the literary academic in all of us, for those who wonder what kind of actual resonance their life's work has, for those who have discovered that new, brief experiences can turn your life on its head.
Rating:
Summary: A smile on my face
Review: It's now nine years since I read Changing Places, and even today I start glowing whenever I see a copy. Personally, I very much prefer Morris Zapp and Euphoric State University to Philipp Swallow or Rummage, but both sides of this hilarious transatlantic parallel are just so funny and heartwarming. Needless to say, I've read every Lodge book since, and Changing Places is clearly the turning point to the great writer he has become.
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