Compare a book to The Secret History and you instantly have my attention. But I think that comparing The Cloisters to The Secret History was a mistakeCompare a book to The Secret History and you instantly have my attention. But I think that comparing The Cloisters to The Secret History was a mistake, and I think that it does the book a disservice (notice how I don't really say which book is being done a disservice? Yeah...). Spoiler alert: I mean BOTH books.
Ann Stillwell is looking for a change. Langushing in her Washington hometown after the death of her beloved father and living with her increasingly agoraphobic mother, Ann wants nothing more than to escape to a life where she can be an academic and study the Renaissance. When an opportunity to intern at the Met in New York City presents itself, Ann is sold. But when she gets to New York, she's told that her mentor has been called away overseas for research. So, it seems like fate when she's offered the chance to intern at the Cloisters instead, and by the lead curator at that. But it's a different world at the Cloisters, quite different from what Ann thought she wanted. What transpires over a damp and sticky summer is a murderous lesson in ambition, obsession, and self-discovery.
The Cloisters had so much potential, but I was not impressed with the execution. A story that started out as mysterious and intriguing devolved into something altogether average. The twist was predictable. The characters were caricatures, but not in the smartly intentional way they were in The Secret History, and I only compare them because that's what this book was compared to in the marketing. Tartt's book was pretentious (in the best way), intelligent, and subversive in a way that The Cloisters tried to be but failed at being. The social commentary in The Cloisters was surface level, and the character development was pretty much nonexistent until the very end, and even then just barely there. Ann was a very static character, and although I like where she ultimately ended up as a character at the end, it was too sudden and not established by anything throughout the book. Her character went from mousy and naive to "girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep" within a few pages, and it was so unbelievable. It wasn't gradual and organic.
Overall it was the pacing that kept me reading until the end. Dark academia books can have the tendency to be meandering and wordy, and while this book had this at points, the medium pace of the narrative helped balance it out....more
"For that was what Ariel had been; that was the act for which Marec had become famous. The creation of another person from the scraps of himself."
Beca"For that was what Ariel had been; that was the act for which Marec had become famous. The creation of another person from the scraps of himself."
Because this is a novella, I won't delve into analyzing the plot or anything like that, but I will talk about the characters and the way that Fellman portrays certain themes and feelings. A big theme of this novella is anxiety in all its forms: academic, professional, personal, etc. This book contains one of the very best depictions of a panic attack that I've ever read--it was visceral and all-consuming in exactly the way a real panic attack is, and I applaud Fellman for it. I also really enjoyed the characters. Too often in dark academia the characters can feel like caricatures, but that wasn't the case here. All of the characters had depth and were superbly developed, things that can often fall short in novellas. Annae, the main character, was particularly well done. I thought the concept of making doubles of yourself that can hold all of the things that you feel make you weak was super thought-provoking. How many of us have felt like we were lacking and wanted to carve away all of our faults? In the world of this novella, this is a reality, and it was kind of horrific in practice.
The Two Doctors Górski is a fresh new addition to the dark academia subgenre, and I hope that it garners the type of acclaim that genre heavyweights such as The Secret History and The Atlas Six have over the years--it's that entertaining and well-written....more
Laura Stearns is a very sensitive girl. At sixteen, everyone who knows her thinks of her as “young”, always on the verge of tears. But all Laura wantsLaura Stearns is a very sensitive girl. At sixteen, everyone who knows her thinks of her as “young”, always on the verge of tears. But all Laura wants to be is World-Historical and to experience what her favorite author Sebastian Webster wrote about: a “shipwreck of the soul”. Because of her love for Webster, she decides to leave her hometown during her junior year to transfer to his alma mater, St. Dunstan’s, located in an isolated coastal town in the Northeast. Upon arrival, Laura becomes captivated with the enigmatic choir president, Virginia Strauss. What starts as an innocent case of admiration and intrigue morphs into a tense, ugly, and obsessive relationship that spirals out of control in ways that Laura could have never imagined. The World Cannot Give is a stunning debut that embodies the dynamics of the dark academia subgenre while also presenting a coming-of-age story steeped in teenage insecurity and yearning.
Oh, this book was GOOD. Like, scarily good. Scary in terms of both the story and how well-written it was. Listen: teenagers today are so scary to me lol. Burton masterfully showed this with how her teens utilized the internet in the story. These kids were just plain nasty! I’m eternally grateful that I am so far removed from high school now—I graduated 13 years ago before social media took off in the way that it has now. We had Myspace and Facebook was really taking off (I didn’t get one until freshman year of college, though), so the sheer magnitude of online presence that kids today have just wasn’t a thing. All of this to say: it was very different. Okay, back to the book! As is typical for a book set in high school, all of the kids weren’t fully formed beings; they were trying to find themselves. Sometimes “finding themselves” meant emulating the other kids that they found interesting, sometimes it meant joining a cult-like school church choir. You know, as one does. While The World Cannot Give had all of the trappings of a good dark academia novel, it was the characters that really shone for me. Laura Stearnes was so insecure but so earnest and full of yearnings that she didn’t know how to handle, and her inner tension really endeared her to me, even though I didn’t always agree with her choices. She wanted so much for her experience at school to mirror the idealized one she had in her head, and isn’t that a feeling that’s always at the core of teenage life? She was lost and quietly flawed, and I loved her! Now, Virginia Strauss, on the other hand, was a whirlwind. A budding religious zealot who was austere and exacting, this girl scared me! But she was absolutely fascinating. She seemed so sure of herself and her place in the world, but it was glaringly obvious that she was just as lost and jaded as the rest of the kids—she was just more intense about it. Seeing her exert her influence on the campus, both with teachers and fellow students, was chilling. Although Laura was the main character, Victoria ruled this book; she bled into every aspect of it, and the other characters truly revolved around her. I won’t forget her character for a long time!
Overall, I loved this book. The open-ended ending confused me a bit though. I think I know what happened, but I’m not sure. Other than that, this book was pretty much perfect, and I can see it becoming a popular entry into the dark academia subgenre.
**eARC provided by the publisher, Simon & Schuster, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**...more
As soon as I started reading Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, I knew that when it was published it was going to rattCheck out my full review and blog here
As soon as I started reading Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, I knew that when it was published it was going to rattle the table. The first sentence is wild. This is one of those books that will disgust some but intrigue others, and I think whatever way it affects a reader will be dependent upon how a reader views morality in fiction. This book touches on some risky subjects, and every single one of the characters is what a lot of readers can have a problem with: they’re unlikeable. They do and think questionable things, especially the main, unnamed narrator. I’m the type that loves prickly, unlikeable characters. I like witnessing people do questionable things. Reading about someone perfect and oh so moral is boring to me. I wanna see people probe the darkest parts of themselves, either to their benefit or their detriment. It’s an intimate and uncomfortable look at those who eschew common social mores. It’s interesting. And Vladimir is nothing if not interesting.
The unnamed narrator of the book is a 58-year-old English professor. She is beloved by her students, and she is married to the English chair at the university. She and her husband have an unconventional marriage: they both sleep with other people. It is an agreement that they have had almost since the beginning, and up until now, it hasn’t been a problem. They are, if not entirely happy, content and satisfied. Sounds alright, right? Well, the husband has now been accused of having inappropriate relationships with his students for years. The funny thing is, his wife was already aware of this. She knew he was sleeping with students, but none of that matters in the face of an impending hearing and possible firing. Then there’s the wife’s budding obsession with a new, younger professor named Vladimir that threatens to shine a spotlight on her whole life and the choices that she’s made and gone along with despite her own feelings.
This book was a whirlwind. It was deeply intimate. It’s told in the first person, from the POV of the wife. Hers is the only POV that we get, and it's a doozy. Because we’re in her head, we get an unfettered look into exactly what she thinks about not only the charges against her husband but about the women he has had inappropriate relationships with. Here’s the thing: she sees nothing wrong with them. In her view, he never slept with underage women, and although they were students they were of age and of the presence of mind to make an informed decision regarding their consent. Taken at face value, she’s technically not wrong. Her husband isn’t a pedophile, and he did only engage with women who consented willingly. But what she refuses to engage with is the question of power dynamics. She mentions the power dynamics when ruminating on the whole ordeal; she knows that in the situations her husband did have a sort of power over the women due to his position. But she thinks that that was what the women were attracted to and that there’s nothing wrong with that. She thinks that the women were old enough and intelligent enough to make the decision, and she also thinks that they need to own up to their own sexualities and actions. She thinks that the “me too” movement has influenced these women and robbed them of their agency, making them look back on what they once enjoyed with trepidation because they’ve been made to feel that they should. I…there’s just a lot to unpack here, isn’t it?
I really enjoyed this book, and I think it will start a lot of conversation about informed consent, power, individual agency, and open secrets in academia. A stunning debut!
**eARC provided by the publisher, Avid Reader Press, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**...more
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