Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
Recommended too many times
It must have started some years ago that this boom became more popular again and my friends started talking about it. Since then, I was met with praise for it over and over again but also somewhat thrown off by the hype about it. As generally a fan of dark academia, this somewhat origine of the trope needed to be read by me at one point. And when a free copy of it fell into my hands, it seemed fated. I didn’t even read the synopsis again but just threw myself into the story. It was a conflicting start and it definitely also dragged along some times, but, God, was there much to experience.
Complex Characters and Situations
Although we follow one perspective, that is Richard’s, we also get genius glances at other characters’ thoughts. That is, in how far they allow us to see them. I rarely have seen so many great, three-dimensional, and nonetheless conflicting characters in a book before. My sympathy for them changed every fifty pages at least. Despite their partly immoral behavior and even bad habits, I grew fond of them. I wanted to get to know them even better and understand their actions and motifs. Just like Richard, I wanted them to be well but also was shocked by revelations and turns of the story. Richard, too, was a character whose thoughts were immensely complex but nevertheless easy to follow and intriguing.
Dark Academia
As I started this book without having informed myself a lot beforehand, I wasn’t sure of the vibe this book would eventually take. The first pages already give away that a death is involved as much as murder, but I was still not excluding the possibility of some supernatural happenings. That they did not appear made this book probably even more intriguing and haunting in the aftermath. These students go through some f***ed-up situations but also cause them for others and it was fascinating to witness how their minds and bodies coped with it. I felt that the book could have been 50 to 100 pages shorter, but I cannot deny that I enjoyed the whole package.
In conclusion,
After having had this book being recommended to me several times over years, I finally picked it up. It took me a month to finish it, but I get why so many people love it. I wouldn’t go hat far when describing my own feelings, but I certainly was intriugued all throughout the book and loved the complexity of the characters and their situation.
