Real talk: I did not like this book and this is definitely the most negative review I’ve ever posted. It may be the most negative I ever post. That is how much I hated this book.
For the first third or so, I was intrigued. I thought the main character was a pompous ass, but I enjoy books with unlikable characters and unreliable narrators so it seemed like it was going well. You spend a lot of the beginning on Richard’s life story – parents who hate him, everyone in his school is stupid, he starts college and it’s stupid. He stares longingly at the pamphlet from an extremely expensive, idyllic northeast liberal arts school. Why this Californian is so drawn to the northeast, it is never quite made clear.
He moves to Hampden, his new school, and gets into this very strange major that seems to be classics but is really five rich kids (plus Richard) hero-worshipping this super pretentious old man. The classes are super exclusive, with only five people in the entire major and the professor basically setting the schedule for his student’s four years. Why the university allows this is never quite clear. The kids in his class are so pretentious about ancient Greek (both the language and its ideals) that I assumed the book was set in the early 20th century, until a passing remark about an ATM. I literally had to look up the copyright date to see when this book was supposed to be.
At this point, I was starting to be skeptical of the book but I pushed on. Boarding school novels are fun! Sad rich kids are interesting – look at Catcher in the Rye!
You find out very early in the book that one of the students was killed by the rest, but it takes half of the book to find out why. When you do find out, it is incredibly confusing why Richard would stick around this crazy group of mind-bogglingly privileged assholes. He doesn’t seem to admire them, envy them, or even like them. He basically allows himself to fall into this murder and then he’s stuck with these psychos.
The book really deteriorated from there for me. There’s will-they-won’t-they get caught, more forays to the fancy cottage, occasionally some guilt over the fact that they killed their friend but mostly drinking and knocking on doors at 2 am being dramatic. Good God the amount of late-night door knocking it’s amazing none of the other students murdered these five.
Another issue I had with this book: none of the main characters act like anyone resembling a 1980s college student. Henry is planting flowers in flower beds at his house, using a wheelbarrow. Do you know how many college students have wheelbarrows just lying around so they can plant flower beds? None. They’re always wearing suits for no apparent reason and sitting around drinking scotch in their “rich kid plays poor” apartments, calling each other “Old boy!” like they’re Jay Gatsby.
Even as someone who loves a good anti-hero/unlikable character, I could barely stomach these kids. They weren’t even unlikable in an interesting way, they were just boring. The end came out of no where, either a deux ex machina as an allusion to all the Greek they studied or the author just wanted to end this longass book and put us out of our misery.
I think the book was supposed to be all ~literary~ and dark and twisty, but I just couldn’t get on board. It didn’t seem like we were supposed to dislike these characters, it seemed like we were supposed to dislike the other students. The characterization was so weak that I couldn’t keep Henry and Francis straight for the first two-thirds of the book. It wasn’t until their characters were fleshed out as France = Gay, Henry = Evil that I could actually tell them apart. This book was just a long slog that started out as a compelling narrative.
ErinKwed 