sigh i guess september is the month of being disappointed by my favorite authors :/
so there are two main problems with this book. the first one is versigh i guess september is the month of being disappointed by my favorite authors :/
so there are two main problems with this book. the first one is very prominent and that's rebecca buckfast as a character. her narration is basically amy dunne's cool girl monologue deprived of all its feminist poignancy by being bloated to the size of a full length novel. i was so unbelievably annoyed by her endless reciting of truisms about how hard it is for a girlboss to live under patriarchy that i wouldn't be able to sympathize with her even if i wanted to. what's more, i was so distracted by questioning whether this truly is some inexplicably bad writing from joanne harris who has previously explored the themes of gender and class discrimination with so much more nuance OR if maybe i'm the problem for scoffing at an unlikable female character despite having followed the stories of despicable men with interest - i was so distracted by this internal wokeness debate that i almost failed to grasp the real reason for why the conclusion to this dark academic saga is so disappointing.
in essence, this story has nothing to do with st oswald's as a place or as a symbol. the two previous novels introduced us to this elite school for boys through the eyes of a teacher for whom it is his entire life and so he has no choice but to love it despite its scandals and inequities. this image then was put into perspective by a second narrator who has been deeply hurt by this school as an institution, as a collective of people, as an abstract ideal. beyond any murders and tragic accidents that take place in their stories, to me, this examination of education in its broadest sense as it relates to society is the very soul of dark academia as a genre. therefore i was looking forward to returning to st oswald's - once again in a state of upheaval, merging with a school for girls, for the first time ruled by a woman headmaster who, as the previous novels have led me to expect, may or may not have some vendetta against st oswald's and will take her revenge, unless roy straitley, the school's elderly champion, will manage to thwart his counterpart's plans once again.
what i got instead was a barely passable domestic thriller / family drama which harris incorporated into this world in a painstakingly contrived manner by having rebecca buckfast tell her tragic backstory to roy straitley, stretching it out for several days (weeks?) and filling it with a lethal dose of stock phrases about how women are being oppressed and need to find "a narrow door" etc etc. nothing in the tale she makes straitley and the reader listen to has anything to do with st oswald's: the events in question take place when she used to be a teacher at a different school and even that school is nothing but a place where a certain tragedy just happened to happen - the school didn't "cause" it. instead, the problems la buckfast has were all caused by the big and small traumas she suffered from her brother, her parents and her husband - they are at the heart of this book and should've been explored in a standalone mystery novel that isn't shooting itself in the foot by trying to make these events relevant to roy fucking straitley and his creepy school of gays and sociopaths. and since the present day timeline is merely a contrived framing device for the life and times of rebecca buckfast, we don't find out anything about how she runs st oswald's as the first woman headmaster or how the girls are getting integrated, which becomes embarrassingly obvious in the last chapter during her final feminist monologue about the bright future of st oswald's girls that does ring rather hollow, given how much the book is NOT about st oswald's girls.
and, to top it all off, roy straitley - everyone's favorite classics master, an ace icon and one of the coolest fictional characters ever - had to be relegated to simply sitting there all book long and listening to this random woman's story. and, i guess, serving as some sort of epitome of the old patriarchal regime to be symbolically demolished on the way to our bright feminist future. i wish we'd seen more of him discovering that girls can study latin too and learning about pronouns and trans issues. i wish we'd followed his reluctant budding friendship with his former nemesis dr devine. i wish his grief and coming to terms with what he had learned about his old friend in the previous book had been better explored. ultimately, i wish we'd spent more time at st oswald's together with its teachers and students in this final st oswald's novel :(...more
i firmly believe that dark academia is more about existential issues and crises brought on by acquiring knowledge than the fact that someone got murdei firmly believe that dark academia is more about existential issues and crises brought on by acquiring knowledge than the fact that someone got murdered on campus - which is why this older novel by martha southgate is in my opinion a prime example of the genre. the main theme here is internalized racism which was refreshing (albeit not relaxing) to read about since dark academia focused on people of color is unfortunately still not easy to find. i was particularly thrilled to see the following question explored: is a member of a marginalized community who "made it" under moral obligation to help the other members of that community to achieve the same results? and while in the end the book gives you the answer you might expect, it does explore the complexities of the issue carefully.
but far from being "just" an exercise in themes, the novel weaves together the three character portraits of its protagonists masterfully. jerome washington was a character who i, as someone who came from a relatively basic background to work in a field as elitist as art history, was particularly impacted by. the romance subplot was a surprisingly welcome addition as well. now i believe that every dark academia book should feature a passionate love affair between people in their late 40s...more
despite most of the plot not taking place at a university this book gave me dark academia vibes. it has the "wants to become an author" to bisexualitydespite most of the plot not taking place at a university this book gave me dark academia vibes. it has the "wants to become an author" to bisexuality to murder pipeline typical for the genre. tim cornish is like if tom ripley, instead of being talented, was just constantly horny and falling in love at first sight with mysterious strangers. or if richard papen, instead of studying the classics and engaging in other freudian rituals of sublimation, dedicated his college years to more straightforward exploration of his sexuality. all of them ended up killing someone though so it appears there's no other way but down the dark academia pipeline lol
i enjoyed the melodrama but wasn't satisfied with the ending. too many important roles in the mystery resolution were outsourced to the characters first introduced in the last act and the epistolary structure started collapsing in on itself. i think the author should've gone with a neater, if more predictable, conclusion....more