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The World Cannot Give
How far would you go after finding something–or someone–worthy of devotion?...
Don't miss the novel Vogue calls "The Secret History meets The Price of Salt", following an impressionable new student at an elite boarding school who falls in with the devoted members of a cultish choir group on campus, impassioned by their hunger for transcendence and, especially, the charismatic girl who rules over them…
When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the members of the choir.
Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go.
The World Cannot Give is a shocking meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.
Don't miss the novel Vogue calls "The Secret History meets The Price of Salt", following an impressionable new student at an elite boarding school who falls in with the devoted members of a cultish choir group on campus, impassioned by their hunger for transcendence and, especially, the charismatic girl who rules over them…
When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic “prep school prophet” (and St. Dunstan’s alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the school’s chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herself—and from the members of the choir.
Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Webster’s novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginia’s hold on the “family” she has created, and Virginia’s efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go.
The World Cannot Give is a shocking meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 8, 2022
About the author
Tara Isabella Burton
19 books666 followersTara Isabella Burton has followed a female hermit into the remote Caucasus, gotten love amulets from Turkish Islamic shamans, and held signs with the street preachers of Las Vegas.
Her work on religion, culture, and place can be found at National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, The Economist's 1843, Aeon, The BBC, The Atlantic, The American Interest, Salon, The New Statesman, The Telegraph, and more. Her fiction has appeared at The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, Great Jones Street, Tor.com, PANK, Shimmer, and other places. She has received The Spectator's 2012 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and a 2016 Lowell Thomas Award.
Her first novel, Social Creature, is forthcoming from Doubleday (US) and Bloomsbury/Raven (UK) in June 2018, and will be translated into nine more languages, including Italian, French, and Russian. She is also working on a non-fiction book about new religious and "replacement religion" movements, Strange Rites: Cults and Subcultures After the Death of God, to be published by Public Affairs in 2019.
Tara recently completed a doctorate in theology as a Clarendon Scholar at Trinity College, Oxford. She is currently a staff writer on the religion beat at Vox.
Her work on religion, culture, and place can be found at National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, Al Jazeera, The Economist's 1843, Aeon, The BBC, The Atlantic, The American Interest, Salon, The New Statesman, The Telegraph, and more. Her fiction has appeared at The New Yorker's Daily Shouts, Great Jones Street, Tor.com, PANK, Shimmer, and other places. She has received The Spectator's 2012 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and a 2016 Lowell Thomas Award.
Her first novel, Social Creature, is forthcoming from Doubleday (US) and Bloomsbury/Raven (UK) in June 2018, and will be translated into nine more languages, including Italian, French, and Russian. She is also working on a non-fiction book about new religious and "replacement religion" movements, Strange Rites: Cults and Subcultures After the Death of God, to be published by Public Affairs in 2019.
Tara recently completed a doctorate in theology as a Clarendon Scholar at Trinity College, Oxford. She is currently a staff writer on the religion beat at Vox.
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May 26, 2022
this is my fault. i should know by now that titles claiming to have dark academia or sapphic vibes should be approached with extreme caution.
DISCLAIMER: I did not like this book and my review reflects of that. I will be brutally honest about my thoughts on this novel so if you want to read this or if this book happens to be on your ‘radar’ I recommend you check out more positive reviews. If you loved this book, I am happy for you but please don’t tell me I’m wrong for disagreeing with you.
Affected and self-important The World Cannot Give makes for a singularly insipid read. Its biggest ‘sin’ is that it tries to be the dark academia equivalent of Not Like Other Girls. For all its attempts at being ‘not like’ other dark academia books, The World Cannot Give was one of the most generic books I’ve read in a very long time. From its poorly rendered setting to its wafer-thin characters, The World Cannot Give reads like a been-there-done-that boarding school novel. This is the kind of novel that thinks it is a lot smarter than it is (in reality it is as intellectually deep as a puddle, of the shallow variety). For all its attempts at intertextuality and self-awareness (we have few throwaway lines on the dangers of romanticizing elitist institutions and idealizing the past and historical figures), it has nothing substantial or new to say. The author's writing style and the tone of her narrative brought to mind two novels that I am not fond of, The Silent Patient and An Anonymous Girl. If you liked them chances are you will have a more positive reading experience with The World Cannot Give than I was.
If you like cheesy shows such as Riverdale or self-dramatizing books such as Plain Bad Heroines ,Belladonna, A Lesson in Vengeance, Vicious Little Darlings, Good Girls Lie (where characters are prone to angsty theatricals) you may be able to actually enjoy The World Cannot Give.
As I warned above, this review is going to be harsh so if you aren’t keen on reading negative reviews you should really give this review a miss.
minor spoilers below
STORY/PLOT
Contrary to what the blurb says, The World Cannot Give is no ‘The Girls meets Fight Club’. Nor is it a satisfying ‘coming-of-age novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence. And the only ‘shocking’ thing about it is that it is shockingly bad. On the lines of, how was this even published?
The first page is misleadingly promising. I liked the opening line and that whole first paragraph. Alas, with each new page, my high hopes dwindled.
Laura is on her way to St. Dunstan’s Academy in Maine. She’s ecstatic about attending this school because she hero-worships Sebastian Webster who used to go there in the 1930s. Angsty Webster wrote this book about the “sclerotic modern world” and the “shipwreck of the soul” and goes on and on about wanting to be “World-Historical”. Webster died at 19 fighting for Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Anyway, our sensitive Laura is enthralled by his writings and his fake-deep ideas so of course, she wants to study where he did. She gets to St. Dunstan goes to her room and meets two girls who from this scene onwards will not change. That is, this one scene establishes their one-note characters. There is Freddy who is a tertiary sort of character who just glares, snorts, scowls, and grimaces because that’s the kind of mean-ish one-dimensional sidekick she is. Then there is Bonnie who is all about her followers and using her boarding school as a prop for her dark academia inspired videos & photos. Laura eventually goes to the school’s chapel (Webster is buried there and there is a statue in his honour in that area) and she hears the choir. Her spirit is so moved by what she experiences at the chapel that she feels lifted to a higher plane of existence or something. But wait, the choir is rudely interrupted by a girl with a shaved head who is a queer feminist who is just like so done with the institution and wants to abolish mandatory church attendance. Laura, our innocent, is shooketh by her actions and somehow, despite her wishy-washy personality, ingratiates herself with the choir president, Virginia. We learn virtually nothing more about the school, nor do we get any real insight into how Laura’s classes are going, what she’s studying, her teachers, their methods…Laura joins the choir and what follows is a lot of scenes that are just filler leading up to the real ‘conflict’. The choir, this ‘clique’, did not make for interesting people, consequently, I was bored by the limited banter that didn’t reveal anything significant about them or their surroundings. Laura is Virginia’s lapdog, so she starts emulating whatever Virginia does (comparing herself to other literary sidekicks), Virginia spends her time ranting about the ‘sclerotic world’, her aversion towards matters of the flesh, and bemoaning the ye olden days and is mad that she has to be in the proximity of so many sinners. She also doesn’t want Brad, who is also in the choir, and Bonnie to be together. Brad is loyal to Virginia so he is conflicted. Bonnie is in love with Brad for reasons. And why the hell not at this point. The only ones in the choir who came across as devoted to Webster, his ‘insights’ into the ills of the modern world, were Laura and Virginia. But they just have the same conversations about this guy. They don’t expand on his views, they merely reiterate the term ‘World-Historical’ and his other catchphrases. Anyway, time goes by and eventually things come to head when Bonnie decides to encroach on Virginia’s territory (the chapel) as retaliation for her interfering in her love life (instead of taking issue with Brad…ugh). Isobel, the queer feminist, comes into play but her presence is very much kept off-page. Virginia becomes increasingly fanatical and decides to go all Old Testament God on the people who have betrayed her or revealed that they are not 'virtuous' (quelle surprise...).
TONE/WRITING
You see the cover, you read the blurb, you come across someone comparing this to Donna Tartt (comparing book such as this to the secret history should be made into a punishable offence…ahem, i’m jesting of course), you think, this is going to be DEEP and possibly even intellectual and emotionally stimulating. You are, of course, dead wrong. This book reads like a spoof. But not a fully committed one. It actually reminded me of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. There the narrative makes fun of the heroine for wanting to be in a Gothic novel and seeing the world through Gothic-tinted lenses and overdramatising everything. This is exactly it. Except, it also takes itself seriously…kind of? The writing and tone try to mirror the way Laura sees the world. She yearns for Webster and, like Virginia, finds the present-day intolerable. So the writing uses this exaggerated and self-dramatizing language reminiscent of historical novels. Some of these are actually decent. But then we get a lot of short sentences and exclamations marks. This kind of style can work. For instance, in Dorothy Strachey’s Olivia, which actually happens to be a far superior boarding-school book exploring queer desire. The language there is very high-flown but it worked because Strachey could write some truly beautiful and playful passages.
Here the writing verges on the ridiculous and more often than not it comes across as just plain bad. We had clumsy, inharmonious, and even cheesy sentences: “Barry Ng blushes at this. Virginia glares at him. Brad sighs a long and heavy sigh.”; “She looks from Brad to Bonnie and back again. Brad sighs a long and exhausted sigh.”; “Shame floods Laura’s face; she curdles it into fury.” (lol); ““One choir. One family.” Her smile twitches.” (twitching smiles? what is this? fanfic i wrote at 15?); “Her smile glints.” (ugh); “Virginia didn’t know. Virginia couldn’t have known. Virginia would never. Virginia always would. Of course, of course, Virginia would.”; “Isobel is wrong, Laura tells herself. Isobel has to be wrong. Isobel’s just jealous; Isobel has no sense of transcendence;”. And these are just a few examples…the writing & tone did nothing for me. Very few writers can make third person present tense work and Burton isn't one of them I'm afraid...
I struggled to take it seriously and even if it was intentionally trying to be satirical, well, even then I would have found it ridiculous.
THEMES/ ‘IDEOLOGY’
Like I said above this book tries to be different from other boarding schools/dark academia books by referencing the rise in popularity that dark academia aesthetics & media have had in the last few years…but that doesn’t result automatically in a thought-provoking commentary on the dangers of romanticism elitist institutions such as universities and or private schools. One of the two only poc characters in the story has a few lines that highlight how institutions like St. Duncan are built on inequality and that we should be more critical about those Old White Men who likely committed Bad Things and should not be therefore uncritically revered. Yeah fair enough. But that’s it. Laura and Virginia spend the whole bloody book going on about the ‘sclerotic modern world’ and are contemptuous of anyone who isn’t in awe of Webster. They believe in God..sort of? For all their talk about sins and transcendence, I was not at all convinced that they even had a strong relationship to their faith. Virginia wants to be baptized, but her decision to do so is made sus because she’s portrayed as sort of unhinged so she truly isn’t ‘genuine’. Laura instead is more mellow about her faith so I don’t understand why she would Virginia’s fanatical rants to be of any appeal. You do you babe and all that but come on…Virginia wasn’t even a charismatic orator. Their ideology actually brought to mind the kids from The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. Like those lil creeps, Virginia and Laura find the modern world to be disgusting. They particularly don’t get why people are obsessed with sex. They merely want to transcend their bodies and reach a higher, more enlightened plane of existence. I think the author was trying to do her own version of “Beauty is terror” but yikes. It just came across as stagy. Additionally, I found it annoying that characters who could have been on the aroace spectrum are actually just ‘repressed’.
Anyway, this book had nothing interesting to say about faith, romanticizing the past, or the dangers of idealizing the ones you care for.
The story towards the end takes a weird route in that it becomes all about how boys/men exploit women and betray their trusts by sharing explicit photos and videos of their gf or sex partners with their male friends and this plotline worsened the already existing disconnect between the tone and the content of the book.
CHARACTERS/RELATIONSHIPS
I understand that people are incongruent but these characters did not make bloody sense. They were extremely one-note and then for plot-reasons they would do something really random. Laura is boring and annoying. I can cope with characters who are obsessed with a friend or who are introverted or even naive. But Laura was just embarrassing. Her devotion to Virginia lacked substance. Their dynamic was uneventful. Bonnie was depicted in a purposely grating way and grated my nerves. Isobel was gay and a feminist and stands against the bullshit Virginia and Laura believe in. That’s it. The boys are either milquetoast assholes who don’t see the problem in sharing nudes or doing whatever Virginia says because why not. There is this one guy in the choir who exists just to say ‘that’s cringe’ or ‘that’s completely cringe’.
Virginia was the worst offender. She had no redeeming qualities but we were meant to feel some degree of sympathy towards her. Come on. She wasn’t a convincing or compelling character. I didn't find her an intriguing or cryptic mystery. She was nasty and I didn’t like that everything she does or says is basically chalked up to her being a total religious zealot. All of her reactions are so extreme as to make her into a caricature more than a person. I didn’t like the way her eating disorder was portrayed as it
The obsession and desire promised by the blurb were just not really there. I mean, yeah, the girl was obsessed but there was something perfunctory about it. The sapphic yearning I was hoping to find in these pages was largely absent. There is a f/f couple, but they had barely any scenes and they had 0 chemistry whatsoever. They came across as friends or sisters even. Then we are meant to believe that someone like Isobel would fall for Virginia because they shared a past? Surely Isobel, who is supposedly clever, would be a bit sus about Virginia's sudden change of heart. Also, shouldn't Virginia's decline in her physical and mental health be a red flag of sorts? Shouldn't Isobel have shown more concern over Virginia's state of mind?
SETTING
0 sense of place. There are barely any descriptions of the school and very few passages detailing the nearby landscapes. The novel takes place nowadays I guess but there were barely any contemporary references. This could have worked if then we didn’t have a plotline involving Bonnie’s online following, sexting, or even certain terms (such as cringe) being used. It just took me out of the story as the majority of the narrative and dialogues were trying to conjure an ‘old’ timeless vibe. I think if the novel had had a historical setting it would have actually worked in its favour. Its modern social commentary after all is very half-arsed and had a vague tokenistic vibe to it (isobel existing just to oppose the establishment etc.).
I’m going to recommend a few books that in my opinion do what this book tries to do a lot better: Frost in May (coming of age, all-girl school, Catholicism), Abigail (coming of age, WWII Hungary, all-girl school, fraught friendships), Catherine House (Gothic, college, creepy), Old School (all-boys schools, jealousy, ambition, privilege, self-knowledge), Sweet Days of Discipline (queer desire, obsession, order vs. chaos, all-girl school), The Inseparables (all-girl school, obsession, queer desire, Catholicism),These Violent Delights (college, obsession, toxic relationships, queer desire), Olivia (all-girl school, France 1890s, unrequited love, queer desire), A Great and Terrible Beauty (fantasy, fraught friendships, all-girl schools, f/f side), Passing (jealousy, race, queer repressed desire), Ninth House (dark academia, Yale, urban fantasy, tackles privilege, corruption, misogyny), The Wicker King (dark academia vibes, queer desire, obsession, toxic relationships).
Maybe if this novel had gone truly committed to being a parody, and upped the camp factor, maybe then I would have found it a little bit amusing. But it didn't so nope, this novel did not work for me at all. The story was stupid, the characters were either bland or neurotic (in a really exaggerated, possibly problematic, way), the themes were poorly developed and relied on the usage of a few certain key terms (without delving into what this term truly means), the sapphic element was largely absent...you get the gist by now. I actually wish I'd dnfed but I hoped that it would improve along the way. When will I learn the lesson? A beautiful cover doth not make for a good book.
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March 9, 2022
Update 3/8/22: Reposting my review to celebrate that today is publication day!
The Goodreads description for The World Cannot Give is a pretty solid summary of the story, though the comparison to books like The Girls or Fight Club is all wrong. Much more obvious, and more accurate, comparisons would be to The Secret History or a darker version of A Separate Peace. But the closest comparison I can think of is not to a novel at all, but to the 1980s cult movie classic, Heathers. Laura Sterns (Veronica) transfers to a new school dominated by a girl everyone fears/wants to be/wants to be with, Virginia Strauss (Veronica Chandler), and her clique, the school choir (the Heathers collectively). Laura falls under Virginia’s spell, due to their shared obsession with a novel and its tragic author. Laura begins to do things she would not normally do, and soon events spiral out of control, placing several characters in mortal danger. (Note: looking now at other readers’ reviews, I see that I am not the first to make any of the observations about these comparisons, even to Heathers, which is good because I thought I might be going too far with that one.)
The World Cannot Give largely works because of passionate intensity of the characters. Virginia’s obsession with doing something important with her life, with being “World-Historical” in the face of this “sclerotic modern world.” Rebellious Isobel and Miranda. Sweet, vapid Bonnie. The love-hate relationship the other students and choir members have for Virginia. And most of all, Laura, who is desperate to experience “a shipwreck of the soul,” and whose confusion about her 16-year-old feelings for Virginia is perfectly believable. They are all, as the Heathers would say, just so very.
But the story of The World Cannot Give will not be for everyone. While the first half feels like a familiar tale, the back half takes several progressively darker turns. I rather liked those twists, though I have to admit that I didn’t love the final few pages, even if the ending made sense. And I found Laura’s failure to fully understand what was happening harder and harder to believe as things progressed. Still, overall I enjoyed this dark tale of high school obsession. Recommended.
It’s just that when Isobel says things, Laura believes them, and when Virginia says things Laura believes them, too; it’s just that Laura knows she is so soft, soft enough that anyone can shape her, and she knows enough to know this softness makes her weak.Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for sending me an ARC of The World Cannot Give in exchange for an honest review.
The Goodreads description for The World Cannot Give is a pretty solid summary of the story, though the comparison to books like The Girls or Fight Club is all wrong. Much more obvious, and more accurate, comparisons would be to The Secret History or a darker version of A Separate Peace. But the closest comparison I can think of is not to a novel at all, but to the 1980s cult movie classic, Heathers. Laura Sterns (Veronica) transfers to a new school dominated by a girl everyone fears/wants to be/wants to be with, Virginia Strauss (Veronica Chandler), and her clique, the school choir (the Heathers collectively). Laura falls under Virginia’s spell, due to their shared obsession with a novel and its tragic author. Laura begins to do things she would not normally do, and soon events spiral out of control, placing several characters in mortal danger. (Note: looking now at other readers’ reviews, I see that I am not the first to make any of the observations about these comparisons, even to Heathers, which is good because I thought I might be going too far with that one.)
The World Cannot Give largely works because of passionate intensity of the characters. Virginia’s obsession with doing something important with her life, with being “World-Historical” in the face of this “sclerotic modern world.” Rebellious Isobel and Miranda. Sweet, vapid Bonnie. The love-hate relationship the other students and choir members have for Virginia. And most of all, Laura, who is desperate to experience “a shipwreck of the soul,” and whose confusion about her 16-year-old feelings for Virginia is perfectly believable. They are all, as the Heathers would say, just so very.
But the story of The World Cannot Give will not be for everyone. While the first half feels like a familiar tale, the back half takes several progressively darker turns. I rather liked those twists, though I have to admit that I didn’t love the final few pages, even if the ending made sense. And I found Laura’s failure to fully understand what was happening harder and harder to believe as things progressed. Still, overall I enjoyed this dark tale of high school obsession. Recommended.
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May 25, 2022Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like. This is complete nonsense. Firstly, writing isn’t a competitive sport. Secondly, I only publish reviews of books in the subgenre where I’m best known (queer romcom) if they’re glowing. And finally: taking time out of my life to read an entire book, then write a detailed review about it that a handful of people on GR will look at would be a profoundly inefficient and ineffective way to damage the careers of other authors. If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain.
**********************
I can see why this book is potentially divisive but, honestly, I kind of dug the hell out of it. There’s something “have your cake and eat it”-ish about dark academia evoking texts that are themselves a deconstruction of dark academia evoking texts. But you know what? I like cake, I like having cake, and I like eating cake.
The premise here is that our POV character, Laura Stearns, is a weak-willed sentimentalist from nowhere who is obsessed with a book called All Before Them—the single extant work of somewhat Byronic-figure called Sebastian Webster (aka the prep school prophet: essentially he wrote one book about his deep discontent with the world and then died in the Spanish wars). She manages to get accepted to St Dunstan’s, the prep school where Webster wrote his indulgent, adolescent dirge which his, of course, an oldy-styley building set on some wild cliffs with a gothic chapel from which the super-exclusive school choir sing mandatory Evensong. The school choir is ruled over by its lead soprano (and only girl), Virginia Strauss. Needless to say—this is after a dark academia novel after all—Laura soon finds herself drawn into the insular world of the choir, whose priorities and approach to life are set by Virginia who is, of course, a fellow Webster enthusiast. As foils to Strauss and the choir, we also have Isobel Zhao, an openly gay anti-traditionalist who is campaigning to make the school more accessible, and Bonnie di Angelis who spends all her time harnessing the dark academia aesthetic to accrue social media fame (something the rest of the school rather looks down on).
The plot kind of follows the usual dark academia paths of obsession, toxic relationships, sexual power, and what I believe The Secret History called “a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” But it deploys its themes in ways I found simultaneously effective as manifestations of those themes and challenges to them. This meant that The World Cannot Give ended up being one of the more successful takes on dark academia I’ve read for, well, a while?
I’ve spoken before about my ambivalent relationship with The Secret History. I read it a just the right time that it spoke my lonely teenage soul that was desperate for grandeur, art (ART!) and belonging, and ideally for icily indifferent but wildly cool girls and boys I could tormentedly fall into destructive love with. I’ve never dared read it since because … I think in my late-thirties I will have no fucking time for either it or my adolescent self. I think Francis’s tragic gayness will grate on me. I will think the narrator’s crush on Camilla is the wrong kind of creepy. I will think Julian is abusive in the wrong kind of way. And, most importantly, I will not be properly fascinated by Henry.
Murdering your most annoying friend in the woods, though? I am always here for that.
The problem is, though, that the *feeling* The Secret History lingers. I read other dark academia books looking for, and not finding, that feeling. Either because The Secret History was not meant to be a subgenre (or even an aesthetic) or because I’m not fourteen-years-old. In any case, to get back to The World Cannot Give it gave me that feeling, but also expected me to examine it and question it. And I really appreciated that.
While Laura is our POV character, she isn’t the narrative voice: that belongs to an archly detached narrator who nevertheless reserves their omniscience for Laura alone. It creates an odd-doubling effect where the reader is both experiencing events with Laura and watching her at the same time, and allows you to be more patient than perhaps you would otherwise be every time somebody make a comment about the “sclerotic modern world” (which is a Websterism). In terms of Webster himself, the book walks a very careful line, ensuring we know enough about his work to understand why a group of teenagers might latch onto it hard and feel it spoke to them very personally … but also to kind of question its utter bullshittery. I mean, yes, Webster’s search for meaning, grandeur, purpose, “shipwreck of the soul”, whatever, makes for a good distillation of the experience of adolescence for most people … but it’s also profoundly privileged. Right down to the fact his supposed fictional book is thinly veiled autobiography, Webster himself having gone posh-arse prep school, lost himself in drugs, sex and violence as part of his search for meaning, and finally got killed in the Spanish Civil War. Fighting FOR Franco.
I think it’s also really telling that Webster’s book is … not to put too fine a point on it all about boys. There’s a brief reference to a townie he had a fling with, and obviously it’s not his fault that his school was an all-boy’s school at the time, but women just do no feature in his world at all. In fact, there’s a really interesting sequence near the beginning when Laura has to sort of de-gender herself to imagine having any sort of personal relationship with Webster, or at least the Webster she has constructed based on this one book he wrote. Webster’s complicated legacy is interwoven with the story: for example, Isobel Zhao confronts Laura directly with the fact he was, at best, a fascist sympathiser (something Laura manages to sort of politely look past because she needs what he represents to her more than she needs a complex reality) and at one point there’s a campaign to have his statue removed on account of the whole … y’know fascist sympathiser thing. (Which felt kind of pertinent given the whole Rhodes statue debacle that … might still be on-going at Oxford?).
I think the broader point, though, about what Webster represents both in the book and as a commentary on dark academia in general is the way dark academia encourages us to invest in figures and institutions that are, essentially and inescapably, bastions of cisheteropatriarchal orthodoxy.
To put it another way (and I’m aware this isn’t a great insight or anything) dark academia isn’t so much a longing for the picturesque at all costs. It’s a longing to be a cishet white man with so much wealth and privilege you can afford to worry about the world not offering you the soul-re-shaping experiences you feel you’re entitled to.
And that’s, well. Frankly that’s a problem. No matter how much we like leatherbound books and the scent of cold stone.
Ultimately, The World Cannot Give is preoccupied with the role of women within the whole dark academia context. Not in an overt “I’m a feminist re-working as me how” way but in terms of its themes and its characters, and how the fact the characters are young woman (mostly queer young women, whether they acknowledge or not) changes their relationship to the patriarchal power that lies of the heart of dark academia. It ended up making me reflect a lot on the role of Camilla in The Secret History: in many ways she’s the least well-articulated of all the characters in that book (even the one who gets literally murdered), being mysterious and almost abstract to the narrator. He’s kind of in love with her but only because she represents a more acceptable vessel for love/desire than either Charles (who he might actually be in love with) or Henry (who might actually be in love with him). And, mostly, Camilla is described in terms of her … boyishness and, um, frigidity. Unlike the others who are allowed flashes of humanising vulnerability, Camilla isn’t really a person at all. She’s an ideal, a safe harbour for socially inappropriate desire, a kind of negative space that exists mostly as an absence of masculinity?
And, interestingly enough, while Virgina Strauss is willing to occupy a similar role for the men of the choir she is permitted to retain her power over them. The moment she slips, becomes human, damaged, vulnerable, any other than an unassailable ice queen, their very desire for her becomes an instrument of vengeance over her. It’s … intense and fascinating and hard to read all at once.
Which sort of sums up the book, to be honest.
I will say, that it’s a book whose characters are drawn in bold, dramatic strokes, partially because that’s how Laura sees them, and partially, I think, because they’re fucking teenagers? While Laura herself is a devoted sidekick to Virginia, and consequently hates Bonnie and is both threatened and drawn to Isobel, my sense was that book actually presents the women fairly neutrally. They’re all searching for love, meaning, power, and identity, it’s just they’re doing so in ways that make them feel oppositional to each other: Bonnie’s Instagramming makes her feel shallow to the others, but Virginia envies her likeability and charm, Virginia’s apparent invulnerability makes people want to tear her down and her semi-masochistic spirituality infuriates Isobel who is also in love with her and views Virgina’s refusal to embrace a queer identity as a personal rejection. The boys, by contrast, are not very well articulated (Anton is a jock, Barry is pretentious, Ivan is prissy, Barry is the ambiguous one, and then there’s another who I literally cannot remember, or maybe there’s only four, fuck me) but that kind of feels deliberate? Especially because, by the end of the book, their stories—in the public eye at least—have completely erased Isobel and Virginia. Bringing us neatly back to the question of who dark academia is really for.
Although, while I’m on the subject of the characters, I might add that characters like Virginia Strauss are incredibly hard to write: she’s awful but charismatic and, as the book goes on, increasingly vulnerable in ways that Laura is unable to address. That’s such a difficult balance to get right. Charisma in particular … I mean … how do you manifest something so chemical and specific on the page? But, y’know, I think maybe I’d have jumped off a cliff (or worse) for Virginia Strauss too. I didn’t like her but … there’s something about her. Something that made Laura’s obsession with her feel, to me, genuinely understandable and real. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Anyway, I realise this isn’t much of a review because it’s not … about the book, so much about a relationship I perceived the book as having to dark academia as a thing. But I don’t want really want to spoil too much of the book (even though its plot beats of insecurity, obsession, happiness, and doom are the traditional dark academia plot beats). For me, I also think it’s easier to deconstruct something for the sake of deconstructing it, and then discover you have nothing to say about it except that it can be deconstructed. Like, there’s a student building in one of the Oxford colleges, I forget which, that was designed by an architect who felt it was important to have the interior bits of building on the OUTSIDE so you could, like, really think about what, like, what a building MEANS man. And I think what most people discover a building means is that there are strong reasons to have the inside bits of a building on the inside rather than the outside. I usually end up feeling like that about books that are self-consciously invested in acts of deconstruction. Which is to say, there’s no point teasing something apart until you see its individual elements unless you can tell me something about those elements beyond simple fact that they exist.
I mean, I know there are lemons in a lemon tart. I don’t need a deconstructed lemon tart to tell me that.
With The World Cannot Give, however, I liked what it had to say about the elements of dark academia that we politely overlook (much as Laura politely overlooks Webster’s fascists sympathies) in order to enjoy its themes and its aesthetic. I liked that it explored what dark academia means (or doesn’t mean) when it comes to the lives, experiences, and needs of young queer women. And I liked that it still managed to give me all those dark academia feels that are, these days, something of a guilty pleasure. There’s also some slightly sharply observed moments when the book reminds you just how little the rest of the school cares about the dramas of its secret society choir. Because, I mean, you wouldn’t care would you? Not realistically. You’d be too busy studying for your exams and worrying if the boy/girl/non-binary person you fancied you back to give a fuck that some classics weirdos ate a live deer and then murdered someone because Bacchus. On top of which, I genuinely felt that the book managed to depict some elements of the teenage experience (although, hey, bear in mind I haven’t had a teenage experience for over fifteen years so what do I know) with a surprising mix of irony, empathy and sincerity. Basically, I rolled my eyes. But I also ached a bit.
And I was genuinely pleased that Laura—and oh God I can't believe I'm going to say this—managed by the end of the book to recognise that the rocks and the harbour are very fucking different things.
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.
And remember: I am not here to judge your drag, I mean your book. Books are art and art is subjective. These are just my personal thoughts. They are not meant to be taken as broader commentary on the general quality of the work. Believe me, I have not enjoyed many an excellent book, and my individual lack of enjoyment has not made any of those books less excellent or (more relevantly) less successful.
Further disclaimer: Readers, please stop accusing me of trying to take down “my competition” because I wrote a review you didn’t like. This is complete nonsense. Firstly, writing isn’t a competitive sport. Secondly, I only publish reviews of books in the subgenre where I’m best known (queer romcom) if they’re glowing. And finally: taking time out of my life to read an entire book, then write a detailed review about it that a handful of people on GR will look at would be a profoundly inefficient and ineffective way to damage the careers of other authors. If you can’t credit me with simply being a person who loves books and likes talking about them, at least credit me with enough common sense to be a better villain.
**********************
I can see why this book is potentially divisive but, honestly, I kind of dug the hell out of it. There’s something “have your cake and eat it”-ish about dark academia evoking texts that are themselves a deconstruction of dark academia evoking texts. But you know what? I like cake, I like having cake, and I like eating cake.
The premise here is that our POV character, Laura Stearns, is a weak-willed sentimentalist from nowhere who is obsessed with a book called All Before Them—the single extant work of somewhat Byronic-figure called Sebastian Webster (aka the prep school prophet: essentially he wrote one book about his deep discontent with the world and then died in the Spanish wars). She manages to get accepted to St Dunstan’s, the prep school where Webster wrote his indulgent, adolescent dirge which his, of course, an oldy-styley building set on some wild cliffs with a gothic chapel from which the super-exclusive school choir sing mandatory Evensong. The school choir is ruled over by its lead soprano (and only girl), Virginia Strauss. Needless to say—this is after a dark academia novel after all—Laura soon finds herself drawn into the insular world of the choir, whose priorities and approach to life are set by Virginia who is, of course, a fellow Webster enthusiast. As foils to Strauss and the choir, we also have Isobel Zhao, an openly gay anti-traditionalist who is campaigning to make the school more accessible, and Bonnie di Angelis who spends all her time harnessing the dark academia aesthetic to accrue social media fame (something the rest of the school rather looks down on).
The plot kind of follows the usual dark academia paths of obsession, toxic relationships, sexual power, and what I believe The Secret History called “a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.” But it deploys its themes in ways I found simultaneously effective as manifestations of those themes and challenges to them. This meant that The World Cannot Give ended up being one of the more successful takes on dark academia I’ve read for, well, a while?
I’ve spoken before about my ambivalent relationship with The Secret History. I read it a just the right time that it spoke my lonely teenage soul that was desperate for grandeur, art (ART!) and belonging, and ideally for icily indifferent but wildly cool girls and boys I could tormentedly fall into destructive love with. I’ve never dared read it since because … I think in my late-thirties I will have no fucking time for either it or my adolescent self. I think Francis’s tragic gayness will grate on me. I will think the narrator’s crush on Camilla is the wrong kind of creepy. I will think Julian is abusive in the wrong kind of way. And, most importantly, I will not be properly fascinated by Henry.
Murdering your most annoying friend in the woods, though? I am always here for that.
The problem is, though, that the *feeling* The Secret History lingers. I read other dark academia books looking for, and not finding, that feeling. Either because The Secret History was not meant to be a subgenre (or even an aesthetic) or because I’m not fourteen-years-old. In any case, to get back to The World Cannot Give it gave me that feeling, but also expected me to examine it and question it. And I really appreciated that.
While Laura is our POV character, she isn’t the narrative voice: that belongs to an archly detached narrator who nevertheless reserves their omniscience for Laura alone. It creates an odd-doubling effect where the reader is both experiencing events with Laura and watching her at the same time, and allows you to be more patient than perhaps you would otherwise be every time somebody make a comment about the “sclerotic modern world” (which is a Websterism). In terms of Webster himself, the book walks a very careful line, ensuring we know enough about his work to understand why a group of teenagers might latch onto it hard and feel it spoke to them very personally … but also to kind of question its utter bullshittery. I mean, yes, Webster’s search for meaning, grandeur, purpose, “shipwreck of the soul”, whatever, makes for a good distillation of the experience of adolescence for most people … but it’s also profoundly privileged. Right down to the fact his supposed fictional book is thinly veiled autobiography, Webster himself having gone posh-arse prep school, lost himself in drugs, sex and violence as part of his search for meaning, and finally got killed in the Spanish Civil War. Fighting FOR Franco.
I think it’s also really telling that Webster’s book is … not to put too fine a point on it all about boys. There’s a brief reference to a townie he had a fling with, and obviously it’s not his fault that his school was an all-boy’s school at the time, but women just do no feature in his world at all. In fact, there’s a really interesting sequence near the beginning when Laura has to sort of de-gender herself to imagine having any sort of personal relationship with Webster, or at least the Webster she has constructed based on this one book he wrote. Webster’s complicated legacy is interwoven with the story: for example, Isobel Zhao confronts Laura directly with the fact he was, at best, a fascist sympathiser (something Laura manages to sort of politely look past because she needs what he represents to her more than she needs a complex reality) and at one point there’s a campaign to have his statue removed on account of the whole … y’know fascist sympathiser thing. (Which felt kind of pertinent given the whole Rhodes statue debacle that … might still be on-going at Oxford?).
I think the broader point, though, about what Webster represents both in the book and as a commentary on dark academia in general is the way dark academia encourages us to invest in figures and institutions that are, essentially and inescapably, bastions of cisheteropatriarchal orthodoxy.
To put it another way (and I’m aware this isn’t a great insight or anything) dark academia isn’t so much a longing for the picturesque at all costs. It’s a longing to be a cishet white man with so much wealth and privilege you can afford to worry about the world not offering you the soul-re-shaping experiences you feel you’re entitled to.
And that’s, well. Frankly that’s a problem. No matter how much we like leatherbound books and the scent of cold stone.
Ultimately, The World Cannot Give is preoccupied with the role of women within the whole dark academia context. Not in an overt “I’m a feminist re-working as me how” way but in terms of its themes and its characters, and how the fact the characters are young woman (mostly queer young women, whether they acknowledge or not) changes their relationship to the patriarchal power that lies of the heart of dark academia. It ended up making me reflect a lot on the role of Camilla in The Secret History: in many ways she’s the least well-articulated of all the characters in that book (even the one who gets literally murdered), being mysterious and almost abstract to the narrator. He’s kind of in love with her but only because she represents a more acceptable vessel for love/desire than either Charles (who he might actually be in love with) or Henry (who might actually be in love with him). And, mostly, Camilla is described in terms of her … boyishness and, um, frigidity. Unlike the others who are allowed flashes of humanising vulnerability, Camilla isn’t really a person at all. She’s an ideal, a safe harbour for socially inappropriate desire, a kind of negative space that exists mostly as an absence of masculinity?
And, interestingly enough, while Virgina Strauss is willing to occupy a similar role for the men of the choir she is permitted to retain her power over them. The moment she slips, becomes human, damaged, vulnerable, any other than an unassailable ice queen, their very desire for her becomes an instrument of vengeance over her. It’s … intense and fascinating and hard to read all at once.
Which sort of sums up the book, to be honest.
I will say, that it’s a book whose characters are drawn in bold, dramatic strokes, partially because that’s how Laura sees them, and partially, I think, because they’re fucking teenagers? While Laura herself is a devoted sidekick to Virginia, and consequently hates Bonnie and is both threatened and drawn to Isobel, my sense was that book actually presents the women fairly neutrally. They’re all searching for love, meaning, power, and identity, it’s just they’re doing so in ways that make them feel oppositional to each other: Bonnie’s Instagramming makes her feel shallow to the others, but Virginia envies her likeability and charm, Virginia’s apparent invulnerability makes people want to tear her down and her semi-masochistic spirituality infuriates Isobel who is also in love with her and views Virgina’s refusal to embrace a queer identity as a personal rejection. The boys, by contrast, are not very well articulated (Anton is a jock, Barry is pretentious, Ivan is prissy, Barry is the ambiguous one, and then there’s another who I literally cannot remember, or maybe there’s only four, fuck me) but that kind of feels deliberate? Especially because, by the end of the book, their stories—in the public eye at least—have completely erased Isobel and Virginia. Bringing us neatly back to the question of who dark academia is really for.
Although, while I’m on the subject of the characters, I might add that characters like Virginia Strauss are incredibly hard to write: she’s awful but charismatic and, as the book goes on, increasingly vulnerable in ways that Laura is unable to address. That’s such a difficult balance to get right. Charisma in particular … I mean … how do you manifest something so chemical and specific on the page? But, y’know, I think maybe I’d have jumped off a cliff (or worse) for Virginia Strauss too. I didn’t like her but … there’s something about her. Something that made Laura’s obsession with her feel, to me, genuinely understandable and real. Your mileage, of course, may vary.
Anyway, I realise this isn’t much of a review because it’s not … about the book, so much about a relationship I perceived the book as having to dark academia as a thing. But I don’t want really want to spoil too much of the book (even though its plot beats of insecurity, obsession, happiness, and doom are the traditional dark academia plot beats). For me, I also think it’s easier to deconstruct something for the sake of deconstructing it, and then discover you have nothing to say about it except that it can be deconstructed. Like, there’s a student building in one of the Oxford colleges, I forget which, that was designed by an architect who felt it was important to have the interior bits of building on the OUTSIDE so you could, like, really think about what, like, what a building MEANS man. And I think what most people discover a building means is that there are strong reasons to have the inside bits of a building on the inside rather than the outside. I usually end up feeling like that about books that are self-consciously invested in acts of deconstruction. Which is to say, there’s no point teasing something apart until you see its individual elements unless you can tell me something about those elements beyond simple fact that they exist.
I mean, I know there are lemons in a lemon tart. I don’t need a deconstructed lemon tart to tell me that.
With The World Cannot Give, however, I liked what it had to say about the elements of dark academia that we politely overlook (much as Laura politely overlooks Webster’s fascists sympathies) in order to enjoy its themes and its aesthetic. I liked that it explored what dark academia means (or doesn’t mean) when it comes to the lives, experiences, and needs of young queer women. And I liked that it still managed to give me all those dark academia feels that are, these days, something of a guilty pleasure. There’s also some slightly sharply observed moments when the book reminds you just how little the rest of the school cares about the dramas of its secret society choir. Because, I mean, you wouldn’t care would you? Not realistically. You’d be too busy studying for your exams and worrying if the boy/girl/non-binary person you fancied you back to give a fuck that some classics weirdos ate a live deer and then murdered someone because Bacchus. On top of which, I genuinely felt that the book managed to depict some elements of the teenage experience (although, hey, bear in mind I haven’t had a teenage experience for over fifteen years so what do I know) with a surprising mix of irony, empathy and sincerity. Basically, I rolled my eyes. But I also ached a bit.
And I was genuinely pleased that Laura—and oh God I can't believe I'm going to say this—managed by the end of the book to recognise that the rocks and the harbour are very fucking different things.
March 8, 2022
Like Tara Isabella Burton’s wonderful debut Social Creature, The World Cannot Give is a story about obsession – how it’s an endless vista unfolding and then, eventually, a prison. It’s also a story about faith, and transcendence, and how easy it is to locate the numinous in someone or something you love, and how dangerous that can be.
Laura Stearns is obsessed with a writer, Sebastian Webster, and his only book, All Before Them, particularly its setting: St. Dunstan’s, a private school on the windswept Maine coast. So consuming is Laura’s passion that, at sixteen, she manages to persuade her parents to transfer her to the school. There, she falls gladly into its old-fashioned rituals – particularly the long-standing, albeit now controversial, custom of Evensong – and transfers her infatuation to Virginia Strauss, the pious, exacting choir president. Discovering that Virginia also loves Webster, with his objections to the ‘sclerotic modern world’ and desire for a ‘shipwreck of the soul’, malleable Laura is drawn into the rigorously self-contained social circle of the choir as well as Virginia’s own obsessions: her intense fervour for God, her punishing early-morning runs.
There is so little about these young people’s lives outside the school; when they step off its campus, they may as well step off the edge of the earth. There’s so little outside the core group, even – when I visualised the campus I couldn’t help but see it empty aside from the main characters. In this way the narrative both creates the impression of a faintly otherworldly setting, and reproduces within itself the hyper-focused, enveloping smallness of Laura’s obsessions.
Tara Isabella Burton once again proves she can write on two different levels simultaneously. (I am beginning to realise this is what she does: takes a plot that looks tropey on the surface, and runs rings around it.) Just as you can read Social Creature as nothing but a thriller about a toxic friendship if you choose to, The World Cannot Give passes muster as a YA book – I wouldn’t have a problem recommending this to younger readers. The sentences are crisp and concise, the voice controlled, and if the plot sometimes veers towards the hysterical, it’s only appropriate that it does so (in the sense that all teenage experiences are inherently hysterical).
For the adult reader, it is an experience filled with aching nostalgia, terror, sadness, a book to make you feel fury and sympathy and pity for your younger self, mourn the loss of innocence, weep for all the potential futures lost, envy the power an obsession could once hold. Life is so long, and youth is so short, and I wanted Laura to be able to hold on to the things she exalted for longer, even as I knew it was bad for her.
The world Burton creates here is an enchantment, suffused with glorious melodrama: the school and its students all slightly exaggerated, the climax an explosion of histrionic misery. I left it behind reluctantly, feeling dazed, tender, and yes, a little more World-Historical.
I received an advance review copy of The World Cannot Give from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Linktree
Laura Stearns is obsessed with a writer, Sebastian Webster, and his only book, All Before Them, particularly its setting: St. Dunstan’s, a private school on the windswept Maine coast. So consuming is Laura’s passion that, at sixteen, she manages to persuade her parents to transfer her to the school. There, she falls gladly into its old-fashioned rituals – particularly the long-standing, albeit now controversial, custom of Evensong – and transfers her infatuation to Virginia Strauss, the pious, exacting choir president. Discovering that Virginia also loves Webster, with his objections to the ‘sclerotic modern world’ and desire for a ‘shipwreck of the soul’, malleable Laura is drawn into the rigorously self-contained social circle of the choir as well as Virginia’s own obsessions: her intense fervour for God, her punishing early-morning runs.
There is so little about these young people’s lives outside the school; when they step off its campus, they may as well step off the edge of the earth. There’s so little outside the core group, even – when I visualised the campus I couldn’t help but see it empty aside from the main characters. In this way the narrative both creates the impression of a faintly otherworldly setting, and reproduces within itself the hyper-focused, enveloping smallness of Laura’s obsessions.
Tara Isabella Burton once again proves she can write on two different levels simultaneously. (I am beginning to realise this is what she does: takes a plot that looks tropey on the surface, and runs rings around it.) Just as you can read Social Creature as nothing but a thriller about a toxic friendship if you choose to, The World Cannot Give passes muster as a YA book – I wouldn’t have a problem recommending this to younger readers. The sentences are crisp and concise, the voice controlled, and if the plot sometimes veers towards the hysterical, it’s only appropriate that it does so (in the sense that all teenage experiences are inherently hysterical).
For the adult reader, it is an experience filled with aching nostalgia, terror, sadness, a book to make you feel fury and sympathy and pity for your younger self, mourn the loss of innocence, weep for all the potential futures lost, envy the power an obsession could once hold. Life is so long, and youth is so short, and I wanted Laura to be able to hold on to the things she exalted for longer, even as I knew it was bad for her.
The world Burton creates here is an enchantment, suffused with glorious melodrama: the school and its students all slightly exaggerated, the climax an explosion of histrionic misery. I left it behind reluctantly, feeling dazed, tender, and yes, a little more World-Historical.
I received an advance review copy of The World Cannot Give from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Linktree
March 14, 2022
This Book Could Not Give
December 23, 2021
3.5 stars. Let us be clear: this is a heavily fictional boarding school book. One of those books where these characters do not look or talk or act like real people, where the school itself is a setting more than a school, where it is more about the idea of it all than anything resembling reality. This is not the first boarding school book to do this and it won't be the last, it might as well be its own fantasy subgenre.
The other thing it's important to know is that I suspect a lot of readers will find our protagonist, Laura, totally unrelatable and not very real. But Laura is quite real. It's just that you have to have been a highly strung, highly romantic, self-righteous virgin as a teenager to really understand her and luckily I was. I have never seen those qualities from my teen years brought to life quite so vividly than I have here.
This is more than a little of The Secret History (but make Richard and Henry girls) mixed with the philosophical boarding school vibes of A Separate Peace. (The comps in the copy are The Girls meets Fight Club and lol nope.) Laura's story centers on Virginia, an even more highly strung self-righteous virgin, who has her own little band of choir boys she orders around. Laura has come to St. Dunstan's (which you would be forgiven for thinking is in England but is in fact in Maine) because she read the classic novel written decades ago by an author who fictionalized his time there and then subsequently went off to fight and die in a war (inconveniently for his legacy, on the side of the fascists). Laura has read his novel a hundred times and wants the kind of romantic, ponderous life that the novel strives for. In Virginia she finds someone who also has high ideals and wants a different kind of life than the students around them. And it isn't long before Laura is totally in Virginia's thrall. Happily this is not a queer subtext book but actively queer text, though sometimes when you are a highly strung teen virgin you do not catch on to these things right away.
From here, it goes much farther than you think it will. It starts with minor machinations and steadily builds. I find Burton to be quite propulsive, I tore through her previous novel Social Creature as well.
It has been a while since I was feeling pretty good about a book and then the ending kind of ruined the whole thing. Here there is one particular plot point that never makes sense and is never explained and isn't at all in character for any of those involved, and of course it is the one thing that is necessary to set up everything that follows. This book has a big multiple-gut-punch ending, and I usually like those, but here it undermined what we know about the characters. It was too much and it really didn't work for me. I left that half a star because I really was enjoying myself before that.
I also just want to note one thing because it drove me so up the wall at the beginning that I almost put the book down. Virginia and the "choir" she runs are a major part of the book but if you are a choir person please just know that what this book calls a "choir" is not a choir at all and you have to just accept it and move on so you do not lose your mind. I could list for you the many ways in which this choir is not a choir and that it would not have the pure and beautiful sound Burton describes but it must be the way Burton says for the book to work so just actively suspend your disbelief.
Content warnings for suicide.
The other thing it's important to know is that I suspect a lot of readers will find our protagonist, Laura, totally unrelatable and not very real. But Laura is quite real. It's just that you have to have been a highly strung, highly romantic, self-righteous virgin as a teenager to really understand her and luckily I was. I have never seen those qualities from my teen years brought to life quite so vividly than I have here.
This is more than a little of The Secret History (but make Richard and Henry girls) mixed with the philosophical boarding school vibes of A Separate Peace. (The comps in the copy are The Girls meets Fight Club and lol nope.) Laura's story centers on Virginia, an even more highly strung self-righteous virgin, who has her own little band of choir boys she orders around. Laura has come to St. Dunstan's (which you would be forgiven for thinking is in England but is in fact in Maine) because she read the classic novel written decades ago by an author who fictionalized his time there and then subsequently went off to fight and die in a war (inconveniently for his legacy, on the side of the fascists). Laura has read his novel a hundred times and wants the kind of romantic, ponderous life that the novel strives for. In Virginia she finds someone who also has high ideals and wants a different kind of life than the students around them. And it isn't long before Laura is totally in Virginia's thrall. Happily this is not a queer subtext book but actively queer text, though sometimes when you are a highly strung teen virgin you do not catch on to these things right away.
From here, it goes much farther than you think it will. It starts with minor machinations and steadily builds. I find Burton to be quite propulsive, I tore through her previous novel Social Creature as well.
It has been a while since I was feeling pretty good about a book and then the ending kind of ruined the whole thing. Here there is one particular plot point that never makes sense and is never explained and isn't at all in character for any of those involved, and of course it is the one thing that is necessary to set up everything that follows. This book has a big multiple-gut-punch ending, and I usually like those, but here it undermined what we know about the characters. It was too much and it really didn't work for me. I left that half a star because I really was enjoying myself before that.
I also just want to note one thing because it drove me so up the wall at the beginning that I almost put the book down. Virginia and the "choir" she runs are a major part of the book but if you are a choir person please just know that what this book calls a "choir" is not a choir at all and you have to just accept it and move on so you do not lose your mind. I could list for you the many ways in which this choir is not a choir and that it would not have the pure and beautiful sound Burton describes but it must be the way Burton says for the book to work so just actively suspend your disbelief.
Content warnings for suicide.
December 31, 2023
i reaaaaally enjoyed this lol
definitely one of those books where it had a plot cocktail full of everything i love reading about. is there anything better than using morally grey characters who are as entertaining as they are ridiculous to explore adolescence and the questions that linger long after? to me, no!!
i know the whole “throwing a bunch of titles as a comparison” thing is a faux paus but this felt like such a cool combination of the secret history, life is strange and mean girls (lol) to me both thematically and tonally (which i think was balanced really well considering the range of delivery in those titles).
the only thing i wish this book had more of was… book lol. there were some points that had me wishing there was a bit more depth added but maybe thats just me being greedy ❤️
definitely one of those books where it had a plot cocktail full of everything i love reading about. is there anything better than using morally grey characters who are as entertaining as they are ridiculous to explore adolescence and the questions that linger long after? to me, no!!
i know the whole “throwing a bunch of titles as a comparison” thing is a faux paus but this felt like such a cool combination of the secret history, life is strange and mean girls (lol) to me both thematically and tonally (which i think was balanced really well considering the range of delivery in those titles).
the only thing i wish this book had more of was… book lol. there were some points that had me wishing there was a bit more depth added but maybe thats just me being greedy ❤️
February 16, 2023
It had somewhat of the "insane- obsessive - cult like- fever dream" of a story line that can be very compelling if done right. Unfortunately it didn't work for me. It made me extremely uncomfortable at some parts while in parts drawing me in into the weirdness then just, no. I was close to the end. But this is the big year of DNFING so I'm content with putting into the unfinished books and also will hopefully not want to pick up again.
March 9, 2022
the fact this book is compared to 'the secret history' is CRIMINAL. who gave them the right? the cheek, the nerve, the gall, the audacity and the gumption!
virginia is such a "i'm not like the other girls" character lmao
also, if i took a shot every time "sclerotic modern world" was written in the book, i'd be dead by alcohol poisoning.
virginia is such a "i'm not like the other girls" character lmao
also, if i took a shot every time "sclerotic modern world" was written in the book, i'd be dead by alcohol poisoning.
June 5, 2022
Thanks to Simon & Schuster for an ARC of “The World Cannot Give” by Tara Isabella Burton for an honest review. 📚 ❤️ 🥰
I love how the author writes first person of Laura, how she gets hopelessly lost in her own mind, drifting and dreaming, when she tries to abruptly bringing herself back to the present with “anyway, anyway”. We’ve all told stories we realize have been going far too long and need to suddenly be cut short with an “anyway, anyway” even though we could go rambling on forever. That’s our 16-year-old protagonist Laura and how she feels about deceased Sebastian Webster and his lone novel from the 1930s “All Before Them”, as well as her boarding school and Virginia (at first). “Laura’s heart is a hummingbird,” as she is naive and eager, and we love her innocence. It feels as though author Burton is personally telling us this bedtime story as chapters melt away. But like any great book there’s dark characters to wrestle, and in “The World Cannot Give”, questions of devotion are challenged. Beautifully written, alluring. Great Summer 2022 read.
I love how the author writes first person of Laura, how she gets hopelessly lost in her own mind, drifting and dreaming, when she tries to abruptly bringing herself back to the present with “anyway, anyway”. We’ve all told stories we realize have been going far too long and need to suddenly be cut short with an “anyway, anyway” even though we could go rambling on forever. That’s our 16-year-old protagonist Laura and how she feels about deceased Sebastian Webster and his lone novel from the 1930s “All Before Them”, as well as her boarding school and Virginia (at first). “Laura’s heart is a hummingbird,” as she is naive and eager, and we love her innocence. It feels as though author Burton is personally telling us this bedtime story as chapters melt away. But like any great book there’s dark characters to wrestle, and in “The World Cannot Give”, questions of devotion are challenged. Beautifully written, alluring. Great Summer 2022 read.
April 28, 2022
I see what Burton is trying to do. She pits three different factions of belief--religious tradition, progressive reform, and commodification of the self that necessitates a chameleon belief in anything and everything by turns--against one another, with a wide-eyed pilgrim torn between them, all set against a boarding school backdrop and seasoned with the angst of Sapphic coming-of-age. But it doesn't work. This is a book that needed to slow down, get wordier, spend time building its characters and setting.
The thing about books that publishers claim to be The Secret History? No one writes like Donna Tartt but Donna Tartt. They write like they're working production in a factory, because capitalism turns culture into an assembly line. And The Secret History isn't going to roll off an assembly line.
The thing about books that publishers claim to be The Secret History? No one writes like Donna Tartt but Donna Tartt. They write like they're working production in a factory, because capitalism turns culture into an assembly line. And The Secret History isn't going to roll off an assembly line.
March 3, 2022
Amé las vibras dark academia. Todos los personajes son PÉSIMAS personas y aún así estuve súper entrada en el chisme sin parar de leer. Algo que me gustó mucho fue cómo una escuela religiosa lidia con que para sus alumnos este tipo de prácticas son cada vez más obsoletas. Sobre todo me gustó que se vea desde el lado de los alumnos, que entendamos cómo ellos las reinterpretan y no solamente por el lado de la administración. ¿Virginia? El peor ser humano, LA AMO. ¿Bonnie? Quiero seguirla en IG. ¿Isobel? Quizá la única cuyo final me molestó, she deserved better. Lo disfruté un montón.
Y Laura... La tibia protagonista tampoco me molestó, ese idealismo de la adolescencia en el que quieres algo que haga "naufragar tu alma" es muy bello.
Y Laura... La tibia protagonista tampoco me molestó, ese idealismo de la adolescencia en el que quieres algo que haga "naufragar tu alma" es muy bello.
September 2, 2022
I received an advance copy of this novel from the publisher, Simon and Schuster, via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I have a weakness for dark academia novels, though they only work for me roughly half the time. In recent years I’ve read books in this subgenre that have become lifetime favorites, and those that left me so disappointed it veered into anger. More than one of these disappointments came through books I requested via NetGalley, and yet I keep trying. Books like The World Cannot Give are why. I was almost as enamored by it as I was by Tartt’s The Secret History and Hopen’s The Orchard, both of which I absolutely adore.
I’ve read dark academia novels set around groups of classics students, but never around a choir. The addition of music as an important element of the novel evoked in me a taste of that joy Laura pursues so fervently. As did the religiosity early on in the novel. I think the last book I read with this level of spiritual depth was The Orchard by David Hopen. (Which I highly recommend, by the way.) It was fascinating watching as these students changed, for better or worse, and how those changes impacted their passions. And it was devastating to watch everything fall apart, even though I was expecting it.
Laura, our perspective character, is a girl completely infatuated with big emotions and anything that can produce them. She yearns for nothing more than a “shipwreck of the soul,” as defined by Samuel Webster, the writer of her favorite novel. When her family finally agrees to let her attend St. Durstan’s, the alma mater of her aforementioned favorite novelist who died at the tender age of nineteen, Laura is ecstatic. On campus she attends her first mandatory Evensong service and is immediately overwhelmed by the beauty of the music. After a few rocky attempts, Laura manages to introduce herself to Virginia, the lone girl in the choir and its unequivocal leader. Laura is immediately transfixed and gives Virginia every ounce of loyalty and devotion within her, which over the course of the novel seems like a nearly bottomless well. Laura finds herself becoming the second female member of the choir, an entrenched part of their select and secretive group, and loving every minute of it.
I loved the addition of Bonnie as someone who was obsessed with the dark academia aesthetic without having any understanding of depths it could hide. She serves as a brilliant counterpoint to Laura’s shy but wholehearted embracing of those depths, which itself serves as a brilliant counterpoint to Virginia’s fierce, fiery devotion and personality that either entrances or more often repels with no middle ground. Virginia has another counterpart in Isobel and her relentless tirade against God and tradition. Their personalities are similar in their surety of their own rightness and their willingness to stand for that belief no matter what it might cost them. I found Virginia endlessly fascinating, with her Crusader mentality and her firm belief in her own unerring rightness and her unusual, repellant charisma. There were even points later in the novel where she reminded me of Jay Gatsby as she grew more jaded.
These characters have such wild, larger-than-life plans but are so easily bogged down and distracted by the minutia of their everyday campus lives. Not to say that adults are any better about keeping our eyes on whatever prize we set before ourselves instead of getting lost in our routines. But Virginia and her cadre of choir boys and Laura all yearn to be World-Historical, a term coined by Samuel Webster, their hero and idol, in his one and only novel, All Before Them. Being a World-Historical person requires living with intentionality instead of floating through life, and seeking to do great things even when those things are difficult and painful and possibly fatal, if they mean changing the world in some way. These are big aspirations for teens, put before them by another teen who lived out what he preached by dying young for a cause he believed in. If that cause happen to be on the wrong side of history and morality, does that even matter when compared to his fervor? Virginia and Laura and the boys don’t think so.
Burton’s writing is excellent. I’m usually slightly weirded out by novels told in present tense, but it worked really well here. I felt like some hidden, parasitic secondary awareness within Laura’s mind, experiencing her life with her while also seeing some things she in her naivety didn’t catch. The discussions of religion and music came from a different worldview than my own, and thus gave me a lot of food for thought even as I disagreed with them, especially the religious views. What’s even more interesting to me is that Burton herself holds a doctorate in theology and, while this is only her second novel, she has been widely published in the academic and journalism worlds. I could feel some of that prior writing here, as every single facet of this book, every scene and diatribe, felt incredibly necessary to the story. No words were wasted, while at the same time never feeling terse. I was also impressed by the fact that, after reading this book, I have no idea what Burton’s personal beliefs are. It would have been so easy for her to use a story so religious in natural as a pulpit, but she never did. I did not once feel as if she were preaching or trying to draw opinions toward any specific beliefs or tenets.
The World Cannot Give is a deeply thoughtful addition to the dark academia subgenre. It does unsurprisingly go to some dark places, so be aware of that going in. But I found it insightful without proselytizing, raw without veering into emotional manipulation. The World Cannot Give is a well-balanced novel that I’ll be contemplating for a long time.
You can find this review and more at Novel Notions.
I have a weakness for dark academia novels, though they only work for me roughly half the time. In recent years I’ve read books in this subgenre that have become lifetime favorites, and those that left me so disappointed it veered into anger. More than one of these disappointments came through books I requested via NetGalley, and yet I keep trying. Books like The World Cannot Give are why. I was almost as enamored by it as I was by Tartt’s The Secret History and Hopen’s The Orchard, both of which I absolutely adore.
I’ve read dark academia novels set around groups of classics students, but never around a choir. The addition of music as an important element of the novel evoked in me a taste of that joy Laura pursues so fervently. As did the religiosity early on in the novel. I think the last book I read with this level of spiritual depth was The Orchard by David Hopen. (Which I highly recommend, by the way.) It was fascinating watching as these students changed, for better or worse, and how those changes impacted their passions. And it was devastating to watch everything fall apart, even though I was expecting it.
Laura, our perspective character, is a girl completely infatuated with big emotions and anything that can produce them. She yearns for nothing more than a “shipwreck of the soul,” as defined by Samuel Webster, the writer of her favorite novel. When her family finally agrees to let her attend St. Durstan’s, the alma mater of her aforementioned favorite novelist who died at the tender age of nineteen, Laura is ecstatic. On campus she attends her first mandatory Evensong service and is immediately overwhelmed by the beauty of the music. After a few rocky attempts, Laura manages to introduce herself to Virginia, the lone girl in the choir and its unequivocal leader. Laura is immediately transfixed and gives Virginia every ounce of loyalty and devotion within her, which over the course of the novel seems like a nearly bottomless well. Laura finds herself becoming the second female member of the choir, an entrenched part of their select and secretive group, and loving every minute of it.
I loved the addition of Bonnie as someone who was obsessed with the dark academia aesthetic without having any understanding of depths it could hide. She serves as a brilliant counterpoint to Laura’s shy but wholehearted embracing of those depths, which itself serves as a brilliant counterpoint to Virginia’s fierce, fiery devotion and personality that either entrances or more often repels with no middle ground. Virginia has another counterpart in Isobel and her relentless tirade against God and tradition. Their personalities are similar in their surety of their own rightness and their willingness to stand for that belief no matter what it might cost them. I found Virginia endlessly fascinating, with her Crusader mentality and her firm belief in her own unerring rightness and her unusual, repellant charisma. There were even points later in the novel where she reminded me of Jay Gatsby as she grew more jaded.
These characters have such wild, larger-than-life plans but are so easily bogged down and distracted by the minutia of their everyday campus lives. Not to say that adults are any better about keeping our eyes on whatever prize we set before ourselves instead of getting lost in our routines. But Virginia and her cadre of choir boys and Laura all yearn to be World-Historical, a term coined by Samuel Webster, their hero and idol, in his one and only novel, All Before Them. Being a World-Historical person requires living with intentionality instead of floating through life, and seeking to do great things even when those things are difficult and painful and possibly fatal, if they mean changing the world in some way. These are big aspirations for teens, put before them by another teen who lived out what he preached by dying young for a cause he believed in. If that cause happen to be on the wrong side of history and morality, does that even matter when compared to his fervor? Virginia and Laura and the boys don’t think so.
Burton’s writing is excellent. I’m usually slightly weirded out by novels told in present tense, but it worked really well here. I felt like some hidden, parasitic secondary awareness within Laura’s mind, experiencing her life with her while also seeing some things she in her naivety didn’t catch. The discussions of religion and music came from a different worldview than my own, and thus gave me a lot of food for thought even as I disagreed with them, especially the religious views. What’s even more interesting to me is that Burton herself holds a doctorate in theology and, while this is only her second novel, she has been widely published in the academic and journalism worlds. I could feel some of that prior writing here, as every single facet of this book, every scene and diatribe, felt incredibly necessary to the story. No words were wasted, while at the same time never feeling terse. I was also impressed by the fact that, after reading this book, I have no idea what Burton’s personal beliefs are. It would have been so easy for her to use a story so religious in natural as a pulpit, but she never did. I did not once feel as if she were preaching or trying to draw opinions toward any specific beliefs or tenets.
The World Cannot Give is a deeply thoughtful addition to the dark academia subgenre. It does unsurprisingly go to some dark places, so be aware of that going in. But I found it insightful without proselytizing, raw without veering into emotional manipulation. The World Cannot Give is a well-balanced novel that I’ll be contemplating for a long time.
You can find this review and more at Novel Notions.
March 17, 2022
Thank you to Simon and Schuster for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review!❤️
Laura Stearns wants nothing more than to experience a “shipwreck of the soul”, just like the protagonist of her favorite book. Unfortunately, this shipwreck extends beyond her character. The World Cannot Give is a mess. It has the makings of a riveting dark academia novel, but is bogged down by the very pretentiousness it seeks to subvert. It is three different novels trying to mesh into one. It is so ideologically confusing and unstable that its empty protagonist appears robust in comparison. But what truly doomed this book is the poor editing. I honestly cannot believe I received a corrected ARC. Not only is the plot all over the place, but it is riddled with grammatical errors and inconsistencies. I can see a plethora of ideas—the romanticization of the past heralded as “tradition” by religious extremists, a Nate Jacobs-esque examination of how repressed sexuality can catalyze as violence, the way men view women as objects of desire rather than human beings. But the story failed to successfully intertwine these ideas. I felt like I was reading about the same, flat characters being plugged into random scenarios. By the time I reached the third act, I knew I would be disappointed. The writing had completely fallen apart, the themes were jumbled in a last-ditch attempt to be coherent, and reading the end was one of the most dissatisfying reading experiences I’ve ever had.
In short—it did not give. It only took. Took valuable time I could have spent reading something better.
Laura Stearns wants nothing more than to experience a “shipwreck of the soul”, just like the protagonist of her favorite book. Unfortunately, this shipwreck extends beyond her character. The World Cannot Give is a mess. It has the makings of a riveting dark academia novel, but is bogged down by the very pretentiousness it seeks to subvert. It is three different novels trying to mesh into one. It is so ideologically confusing and unstable that its empty protagonist appears robust in comparison. But what truly doomed this book is the poor editing. I honestly cannot believe I received a corrected ARC. Not only is the plot all over the place, but it is riddled with grammatical errors and inconsistencies. I can see a plethora of ideas—the romanticization of the past heralded as “tradition” by religious extremists, a Nate Jacobs-esque examination of how repressed sexuality can catalyze as violence, the way men view women as objects of desire rather than human beings. But the story failed to successfully intertwine these ideas. I felt like I was reading about the same, flat characters being plugged into random scenarios. By the time I reached the third act, I knew I would be disappointed. The writing had completely fallen apart, the themes were jumbled in a last-ditch attempt to be coherent, and reading the end was one of the most dissatisfying reading experiences I’ve ever had.
In short—it did not give. It only took. Took valuable time I could have spent reading something better.
November 25, 2021
I admit to almost passing this book by, being put off by the New Adult label attached to it, the young ages of its characters. Yes, I’m one of those adults who thinks one should read age-appropriate books and YA or NA fiction isn’t it. But then again, this book gathered way too much praise to just casually ignore. There was something about it…
Lo and behold, this is that precious unicorn of an adult-appropriate book featuring teenage characters. In fact, in retrospect, this story would have only worked with young characters – the kind of magnificent obsession that drives it simply doesn’t sustain itself after a certain age, out there in a real world. But in an isolated prep school of precociously well-educated well-to-do children, it works perfectly.
And so, the book follows its protagonist, a naïve romantic girl who comes from Nevada to coastal Maine to a school she had always dreamed about, a school her romantic ideal, a Byronesque young writer named Webster had attended a century ago before promptly shoving off to get killed in a war, fighting on Franco’s side of all things. The modern day might perceive Webster as a fascist sympathizer and a raving fool, enough for the statue-toppling contingent, certainly, but for our main character he is perfection. She soon finds like-minded individuals in the school’s choir, led by the wildly charismatic ascetic Virginia.
Now, there’s a character. A daughter of an upper middle class Jewish family, Virginia has reinvented herself as a passionate Catholic and dedicated herself to becoming World-Historical. That phrase appears throughout the book with alarming frequency. The choir kids are positively obsessed with it. It’s only logical that their generation, fed on the mothers’ milk of specialness, would make that leap. It might even be perceived as noble, this desire to become a properly significant person, to change the world, but here it manifests as toxic. A toxic character driver that makes each and every kid into their worst selves.
Our protagonist finds herself completely under Virginia’s spell, first love and obsession all rolled into one with an intensity that only friendships of youth can support. She follows Virginia to the increasingly darker places, until the situation becomes unsustainable and then she becomes the unwitting witness to Virginia’s madness’ manifestation.
There’s a magnificent hypnotic quality to this novel, it’s difficult to put down, it drags you in and holds you tight, like a strange dream, almost. The intensity of the story is sustained perfectly throughout. The characters in their increasingly unhinged states, the situation at its increasingly precarious and dangerous acts. If this was indeed a performance of a choir, you’d marvel at the way they sustain their high notes.
This is a definition perfect coming-of-age story in that it describes exactly the moment a person grows up – the moment they abandon their romantic ideals and see the world for what it really is. The devastating disappointment of it all. The courage to live with it.
And so, you see, this sort of story can only work with a young cast - it doesn’t need the characters to be mature, doesn’t even need them to be conventionally likable. Rest assured it isn’t YA. Or even NA. There’s nothing dumbed down about this story. It is about youth, it's all about youth, about that certain brazenness of asking of the world what the world cannot give. It’s a clever, emotionally potent rollercoaster of obsession and absolutely mesmerizing in its narrative engagement. Wow, indeed. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
Lo and behold, this is that precious unicorn of an adult-appropriate book featuring teenage characters. In fact, in retrospect, this story would have only worked with young characters – the kind of magnificent obsession that drives it simply doesn’t sustain itself after a certain age, out there in a real world. But in an isolated prep school of precociously well-educated well-to-do children, it works perfectly.
And so, the book follows its protagonist, a naïve romantic girl who comes from Nevada to coastal Maine to a school she had always dreamed about, a school her romantic ideal, a Byronesque young writer named Webster had attended a century ago before promptly shoving off to get killed in a war, fighting on Franco’s side of all things. The modern day might perceive Webster as a fascist sympathizer and a raving fool, enough for the statue-toppling contingent, certainly, but for our main character he is perfection. She soon finds like-minded individuals in the school’s choir, led by the wildly charismatic ascetic Virginia.
Now, there’s a character. A daughter of an upper middle class Jewish family, Virginia has reinvented herself as a passionate Catholic and dedicated herself to becoming World-Historical. That phrase appears throughout the book with alarming frequency. The choir kids are positively obsessed with it. It’s only logical that their generation, fed on the mothers’ milk of specialness, would make that leap. It might even be perceived as noble, this desire to become a properly significant person, to change the world, but here it manifests as toxic. A toxic character driver that makes each and every kid into their worst selves.
Our protagonist finds herself completely under Virginia’s spell, first love and obsession all rolled into one with an intensity that only friendships of youth can support. She follows Virginia to the increasingly darker places, until the situation becomes unsustainable and then she becomes the unwitting witness to Virginia’s madness’ manifestation.
There’s a magnificent hypnotic quality to this novel, it’s difficult to put down, it drags you in and holds you tight, like a strange dream, almost. The intensity of the story is sustained perfectly throughout. The characters in their increasingly unhinged states, the situation at its increasingly precarious and dangerous acts. If this was indeed a performance of a choir, you’d marvel at the way they sustain their high notes.
This is a definition perfect coming-of-age story in that it describes exactly the moment a person grows up – the moment they abandon their romantic ideals and see the world for what it really is. The devastating disappointment of it all. The courage to live with it.
And so, you see, this sort of story can only work with a young cast - it doesn’t need the characters to be mature, doesn’t even need them to be conventionally likable. Rest assured it isn’t YA. Or even NA. There’s nothing dumbed down about this story. It is about youth, it's all about youth, about that certain brazenness of asking of the world what the world cannot give. It’s a clever, emotionally potent rollercoaster of obsession and absolutely mesmerizing in its narrative engagement. Wow, indeed. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
This and more at https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
November 12, 2021
When I was in undergrad and we were learning about gnosticism, a friend and I got wine drunk and laid on the floor and tried to get our spirits to fly above our bodies so we could exist outside of our physical forms. It didn't work. But what I'm getting at here is that when you're young and vulnerable and open to possibility, the idea of transcendence is a powerful drug. That's what this novel is about. That, and the dangers of misplaced devotion. And longing. And sex, sort of, despite how much our main characters proclaim that sex is boring. While the idea of a book about a girl desperate to join a prep school choir might sound like a yawn, Tara Isabella Burton is pure magic. Just wait. You'll be listening to choral music in no time and having dreams about crypts. Many thanks to NetGalley, S&S, and the author for an e-ARC of this book.
July 9, 2023
3.5 stars. cautionary tale about what happens when you love books like the secret history a little too much, without thinking critically about the institutions you’re romanticizing. the characters in this book do whatever they can to disguise their fascist ideology. as the facade loses its opacity, the protagonist begins to question her friendships — but not before irreparable damage has been done. highly recommend, if you can deal with a few millenialisms when it comes to dialogue (the author makes a solid effort to replicate how Gen Z’s speak but it made me cringe).
June 21, 2023
This is a book being advertised as for fans of The Secret History, but I think it's more accurate to say that it's about fans of The Secret History. It's the first dark academia book I've seen actually interrogate the relationship between aesthetics and fascism.
Laura is a junior who enrolls in a small liberal arts high school, chasing the history of Sebastian Webster, the author of her favorite book. "All Before Them" is a sweeping, literary campus novel about a group of students getting into hijinks and philosophical debates while at school, loosely based on the author's own experience (you see the similarities here to another book about a certain campus novel). Laura is enraptured by Webster's emphasis on poetical language and Byronic appeal, even when she vaguely wrestles with the fact that he died at 19 after joining the Spanish Civil War - on the side of the fascists.
Laura gets caught up in the romanticism of her new school - joining the choir and quickly becoming enraptured (explicitly romantically) with the choir leader, a stiff religious girl named Virginia. It's here where the novel's message starts to become clear, because Virginia is the kind of figure that has cropped up in online political circles a lot these days. Virginia reads directly like a Red Scare host - formerly liberal, but who felt "pushed" into conservatism by the left's silliness and unseriousness and complete irreverence for the things that REALLY matter. She's an emblem of repressed Trad-Cath coquette sensibilities and aesthetics, and the book constantly shows her linking her political beliefs (we must RETVRN) to the way a "serious" person looks and acts and dresses and conducts themselves. When she gets in arguments with her classmates about Webster, no one says "he's being cancelled," but that's the sentiment that comes across; it's essentially "your fav is problematic discourse" churned through the minds of teenagers who go to debate club. There's even a side character who's a dark academia influencer on Instagram who Virginia despises - she's using the same aesthetic and has a passion for the same school, but unlike the main characters, she's not doing it "for real," like they are.
TIB demonstrates over time the obviously, outlandishly hypocritical attitudes shared by Virginia, the choir, and to a lesser extent, Laura. Of course these kids don't know anything about what the values of the past really were. Of course they see the removal of a statue on campus as attack on traditional values. Burton places the talking points we see in conservative circles online into the mouths of the main cast, both exposing the humor of this level of sanctimoniousness coming from juniors in high school, while asking the reader to confront what parts of their beliefs might fall along the same lines. Why do we place so much value on tradition? What do our beliefs in the beauty of old buildings and old institutions expose about what we hold as important?
All the characters here are tragic figures in some sense, and the book is good about pulling you one direction and then the next through their drama. Virginia is a victim too, just not in the ways she believes. You're cheering for Laura just before she lets you down again.
And Burton does it so well - the conversations feel entirely natural even when the characters seem outlandish. I think this book requires you to be sort of Terminally Online (I'm including myself), but I think it worked well in speaking to that audience. Virginias do exist, as 17-year-olds running around in long skirts bemoaning the death of philosophy and the collapse of a society where "everything is about sex."
The ending to this book is kind of polarizing - I can't tell if it's speaking more to the themes or to the plot. To be honest, I think the book is a little slow to get to its point and starts to drift away from it at the end, even while the Heathers-esque drama between the characters kicks up. I think this book would benefit from being a little sharper in its critique; a lot of the chaos works, but not necessarily all of it.
Overall, I would recommend this book to people who like their critiques wrapped up in messy sad girl esoterica litfic, and to people who have been wanting something new out of the dark academia genre. It's not perfect, but in some ways, I think it's having fun with that.
Laura is a junior who enrolls in a small liberal arts high school, chasing the history of Sebastian Webster, the author of her favorite book. "All Before Them" is a sweeping, literary campus novel about a group of students getting into hijinks and philosophical debates while at school, loosely based on the author's own experience (you see the similarities here to another book about a certain campus novel). Laura is enraptured by Webster's emphasis on poetical language and Byronic appeal, even when she vaguely wrestles with the fact that he died at 19 after joining the Spanish Civil War - on the side of the fascists.
Laura gets caught up in the romanticism of her new school - joining the choir and quickly becoming enraptured (explicitly romantically) with the choir leader, a stiff religious girl named Virginia. It's here where the novel's message starts to become clear, because Virginia is the kind of figure that has cropped up in online political circles a lot these days. Virginia reads directly like a Red Scare host - formerly liberal, but who felt "pushed" into conservatism by the left's silliness and unseriousness and complete irreverence for the things that REALLY matter. She's an emblem of repressed Trad-Cath coquette sensibilities and aesthetics, and the book constantly shows her linking her political beliefs (we must RETVRN) to the way a "serious" person looks and acts and dresses and conducts themselves. When she gets in arguments with her classmates about Webster, no one says "he's being cancelled," but that's the sentiment that comes across; it's essentially "your fav is problematic discourse" churned through the minds of teenagers who go to debate club. There's even a side character who's a dark academia influencer on Instagram who Virginia despises - she's using the same aesthetic and has a passion for the same school, but unlike the main characters, she's not doing it "for real," like they are.
TIB demonstrates over time the obviously, outlandishly hypocritical attitudes shared by Virginia, the choir, and to a lesser extent, Laura. Of course these kids don't know anything about what the values of the past really were. Of course they see the removal of a statue on campus as attack on traditional values. Burton places the talking points we see in conservative circles online into the mouths of the main cast, both exposing the humor of this level of sanctimoniousness coming from juniors in high school, while asking the reader to confront what parts of their beliefs might fall along the same lines. Why do we place so much value on tradition? What do our beliefs in the beauty of old buildings and old institutions expose about what we hold as important?
All the characters here are tragic figures in some sense, and the book is good about pulling you one direction and then the next through their drama. Virginia is a victim too, just not in the ways she believes. You're cheering for Laura just before she lets you down again.
And Burton does it so well - the conversations feel entirely natural even when the characters seem outlandish. I think this book requires you to be sort of Terminally Online (I'm including myself), but I think it worked well in speaking to that audience. Virginias do exist, as 17-year-olds running around in long skirts bemoaning the death of philosophy and the collapse of a society where "everything is about sex."
The ending to this book is kind of polarizing - I can't tell if it's speaking more to the themes or to the plot. To be honest, I think the book is a little slow to get to its point and starts to drift away from it at the end, even while the Heathers-esque drama between the characters kicks up. I think this book would benefit from being a little sharper in its critique; a lot of the chaos works, but not necessarily all of it.
Overall, I would recommend this book to people who like their critiques wrapped up in messy sad girl esoterica litfic, and to people who have been wanting something new out of the dark academia genre. It's not perfect, but in some ways, I think it's having fun with that.
April 22, 2022
i can't tell if this was supposed to be read as satirical or not but i feel like it becomes better if you read it as at least partially so
Rep: lesbian mc, lesbian side characters
CWs: sexual assault, revenge porn, lesbophobia, suicide
Rep: lesbian mc, lesbian side characters
CWs: sexual assault, revenge porn, lesbophobia, suicide
March 27, 2022
Much joy in writing a school story comes of creating our own little world, giving it a local habitation and a name, and variegating it with distinctive customs and practices; great English Public Schools such as Eaton and Winchester even speak peculiar dialects. Tara Isabella Burton gives St. Dunstan’s, her co-ed prep school in Maine, many features of the traditional English boarding school that survive the transatlantic crossing, including replacing American-style semesters with terms, Michaelmas and Candlemas (the latter inauthentic—I’d prefer a combined Hilary-Easter Term). There are also dormitories called Latimer, Cranmer, and Keble – famous names in the history of the Church of England – as well as Mountbatten, Desmond, and Devonshire – an admiral, an archbishop, and a dukedom.
Burton’s previous novel Social Creature was a fantasia on the theme of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and I am even more delighted with this new novel in the line of succession to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. There, an outsider from California at a small New England college majors in Classics and finds himself emmeshed in an elite undergraduate set who not only study Greek tragedy, they live it, with no limits and no regrets. Now in The World Cannot Give (see John 14:27), we have Laura Stearns from Henderson, Nevada, joining a singing group at Saint Dunstan’s school chapel. Their speciality is Anglican liturgical music, especially choral Evensong, under the sway of the strikingly charismatic girl Virginia Strauss, who proceeds to adopt Laura as a protégée and takes over her life. Though the author calls the singers a “choir,” it’s technically an ensemble: five boys, Virginia and Laura.
Laura chose to go to St. Dunstan’s drawn by the legend of a former student in the 1930s, Sebastian Oliver Webster. He wrote a passionate lyrical novel entitled All Before Them (see Paradise Lost, 12. 645), then left school, converted to Roman Catholicism and died fighting for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. I cannot think of a real-life model for Webster, but he recalls such English Communists as John Cornford and Christopher Caudwell, whose deaths fighting on the Republican side inspired Kim Philby and the Cambridge spy ring. If we imagine Webster as a Jesus-figure, Virginia takes the role of Saint Paul, eagerly making converts. Webster’s followers, according to Virginia, should despise the “sclerotic modern world” and become “World-Historical” characters whilst eschewing “moral relativism.” For Virginia and her acolyte Laura, that entails Anglican ritual, studying Latin and philosophy, and early-morning long-distance running.
If you appreciate traditional Anglican ritual, you will enjoy the parts devoted to Evensong. This is the sung service of evening prayer, according to the Book of Common Prayer. My own favorite composers of English liturgical music are Thomas Tallis and William Byrd—ironically both were Roman Catholics—and Charles Villiars Stanford’s Magnificat in C – which Laura hears at chapel – was new to me and to my ear sounded a trifle slushy. I loved Laura’s response to hearing it, though. “It’s how they’re all singing different notes, that are also somehow all the same, it’s how they’re at once so grand and exultant, swelling up their chests on for he hath rejoiced, and also so soft when the line of the music dies; it’s how Laura can hear all their voices, irreducibly distinct from one another, and also how what Laura hears is a single sound, unbroken. . . .” I’ve felt the same hearing the Tallis Scholars rendering Byrd’s Magnificat in the Great Service. Throughout the story we find allusions to this anthem that begins “My soul doth magnify the Lord . . .” taken from Luke 1: 46-55, Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel’s news that she will be the mother of the Messiah. I wonder if the phrase “He hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden” should be taken as an ironic commentary on this story.
As Burton has a theology degree from Oxford and writes nonfiction about religious and cultural topics, it is no surprise that her characters’ beliefs are derived from real, albeit somewhat esoteric, political and sociological theory. Virginia Strauss is portrayed as a Catholic Integralist, specifically an Anglo-Catholic Integralist, which is unusual, as most contemporary Integralist thinkers – such as Crean and Fimister, Vermeule, Deneen, Dreher, and the somewhat intellectually lighter Sohrab Ahmari – are Roman or Orthodox Catholic. Historically, though, their roster includes some real heavy-weights, T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and I’d include Simone Weil too. Some of the characters’ names – Strauss, Sterns, Anton (Laura’s oafish date for the Mayfair Ball) subliminally suggest rightist commentators, and Virginia’s intended internship at the American Institute of Civic Virtue makes one think of certain conservative think-tanks.
Ironically for an advocate of a Christian society, Virginia is actually Jewish, and is frustrated when the school chaplain, Reverend Tipton (most Anglican clergy hate to be called Reverend, preferring to be addressed as Father – or Mother) ignores her request to be baptized. When Virginia finds out that Reverend Tipton is looking for romance on Tinder, she sets up a clever revenge plot, one that also embarrasses Bonnie, Laura’s influencer roommate with 2000 followers who stole Virginia’s spot as first soprano. It’s a cruel but hilarious surprise for both, cleverly sprung by the author. But it also marks the point in the plot where Virginia’s fortunes turn downward.
Isabel Zhao is Virginia’s polar opposite at Saint Dunstan’s, a political radical and lesbian who organizes the student effort to abolish compulsory Friday evensong and to topple the statue of “the fascist” Sebastian Webster, as well as drowning out evensong by playing Black Sabbath over the school sound system. (Tastes differ; Capleton’s “Leave Babylon” is my epitome of diabolic noise.) When Virginia runs against her for student council president, she sets herself up for a nasty surprise.
As reviewer of a new book, I have to skip over the rest lest I spoil it for the reader. But I shall reveal that the denouement is deftly prepared although quite unexpected, and totally appropriate. It is terrifying, excessive, unjust – yet inevitable and right – the very essence of a tragic ending. How tragically ironic that a story about characters who believe in a Christian social order should be the personae of a revenge tragedy, but imagine a twenty-first century schoolgirl as a Marlovian hero. That is how we might view Virginia, an over-reacher determined that nothing stand in the way of her quest to overcome the sclerotic contemporary world. Or is she simply a silly pretentious deluded teenager, without a tincture of common sense? Then Mary’s words respexit humilitatem ancillae form an ironic commentary indeed – Virginia one of the superbos mente cordis sui, the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
On the last page, we discover a passage from the prophet Isaiah, in a note Virginia wrote for Laura.
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. (Isaiah 49:16-18)
It alludes to God’s faithfulness toward Israel, but also to the blood pact Virginia and her followers swore to each other in the school chapel. Does the biblical reference condemn the ultimate blasphemy or is it a message of future hope? How we answer that question will tell us what kind of tragedy we have read. But whichever, I am immensely grateful to Tara Isabella Burton for letting us have a splendid and moving story, worthy to stand on the shelf with The Secret History.
I am most grateful to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC.
Posted on February 1, 2022 Leave a comment
Burton’s previous novel Social Creature was a fantasia on the theme of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and I am even more delighted with this new novel in the line of succession to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. There, an outsider from California at a small New England college majors in Classics and finds himself emmeshed in an elite undergraduate set who not only study Greek tragedy, they live it, with no limits and no regrets. Now in The World Cannot Give (see John 14:27), we have Laura Stearns from Henderson, Nevada, joining a singing group at Saint Dunstan’s school chapel. Their speciality is Anglican liturgical music, especially choral Evensong, under the sway of the strikingly charismatic girl Virginia Strauss, who proceeds to adopt Laura as a protégée and takes over her life. Though the author calls the singers a “choir,” it’s technically an ensemble: five boys, Virginia and Laura.
Laura chose to go to St. Dunstan’s drawn by the legend of a former student in the 1930s, Sebastian Oliver Webster. He wrote a passionate lyrical novel entitled All Before Them (see Paradise Lost, 12. 645), then left school, converted to Roman Catholicism and died fighting for the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War. I cannot think of a real-life model for Webster, but he recalls such English Communists as John Cornford and Christopher Caudwell, whose deaths fighting on the Republican side inspired Kim Philby and the Cambridge spy ring. If we imagine Webster as a Jesus-figure, Virginia takes the role of Saint Paul, eagerly making converts. Webster’s followers, according to Virginia, should despise the “sclerotic modern world” and become “World-Historical” characters whilst eschewing “moral relativism.” For Virginia and her acolyte Laura, that entails Anglican ritual, studying Latin and philosophy, and early-morning long-distance running.
If you appreciate traditional Anglican ritual, you will enjoy the parts devoted to Evensong. This is the sung service of evening prayer, according to the Book of Common Prayer. My own favorite composers of English liturgical music are Thomas Tallis and William Byrd—ironically both were Roman Catholics—and Charles Villiars Stanford’s Magnificat in C – which Laura hears at chapel – was new to me and to my ear sounded a trifle slushy. I loved Laura’s response to hearing it, though. “It’s how they’re all singing different notes, that are also somehow all the same, it’s how they’re at once so grand and exultant, swelling up their chests on for he hath rejoiced, and also so soft when the line of the music dies; it’s how Laura can hear all their voices, irreducibly distinct from one another, and also how what Laura hears is a single sound, unbroken. . . .” I’ve felt the same hearing the Tallis Scholars rendering Byrd’s Magnificat in the Great Service. Throughout the story we find allusions to this anthem that begins “My soul doth magnify the Lord . . .” taken from Luke 1: 46-55, Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel’s news that she will be the mother of the Messiah. I wonder if the phrase “He hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden” should be taken as an ironic commentary on this story.
As Burton has a theology degree from Oxford and writes nonfiction about religious and cultural topics, it is no surprise that her characters’ beliefs are derived from real, albeit somewhat esoteric, political and sociological theory. Virginia Strauss is portrayed as a Catholic Integralist, specifically an Anglo-Catholic Integralist, which is unusual, as most contemporary Integralist thinkers – such as Crean and Fimister, Vermeule, Deneen, Dreher, and the somewhat intellectually lighter Sohrab Ahmari – are Roman or Orthodox Catholic. Historically, though, their roster includes some real heavy-weights, T. S. Eliot, Jacques Maritain, and I’d include Simone Weil too. Some of the characters’ names – Strauss, Sterns, Anton (Laura’s oafish date for the Mayfair Ball) subliminally suggest rightist commentators, and Virginia’s intended internship at the American Institute of Civic Virtue makes one think of certain conservative think-tanks.
Ironically for an advocate of a Christian society, Virginia is actually Jewish, and is frustrated when the school chaplain, Reverend Tipton (most Anglican clergy hate to be called Reverend, preferring to be addressed as Father – or Mother) ignores her request to be baptized. When Virginia finds out that Reverend Tipton is looking for romance on Tinder, she sets up a clever revenge plot, one that also embarrasses Bonnie, Laura’s influencer roommate with 2000 followers who stole Virginia’s spot as first soprano. It’s a cruel but hilarious surprise for both, cleverly sprung by the author. But it also marks the point in the plot where Virginia’s fortunes turn downward.
Isabel Zhao is Virginia’s polar opposite at Saint Dunstan’s, a political radical and lesbian who organizes the student effort to abolish compulsory Friday evensong and to topple the statue of “the fascist” Sebastian Webster, as well as drowning out evensong by playing Black Sabbath over the school sound system. (Tastes differ; Capleton’s “Leave Babylon” is my epitome of diabolic noise.) When Virginia runs against her for student council president, she sets herself up for a nasty surprise.
As reviewer of a new book, I have to skip over the rest lest I spoil it for the reader. But I shall reveal that the denouement is deftly prepared although quite unexpected, and totally appropriate. It is terrifying, excessive, unjust – yet inevitable and right – the very essence of a tragic ending. How tragically ironic that a story about characters who believe in a Christian social order should be the personae of a revenge tragedy, but imagine a twenty-first century schoolgirl as a Marlovian hero. That is how we might view Virginia, an over-reacher determined that nothing stand in the way of her quest to overcome the sclerotic contemporary world. Or is she simply a silly pretentious deluded teenager, without a tincture of common sense? Then Mary’s words respexit humilitatem ancillae form an ironic commentary indeed – Virginia one of the superbos mente cordis sui, the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
On the last page, we discover a passage from the prophet Isaiah, in a note Virginia wrote for Laura.
Can a woman forget her nursing child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. (Isaiah 49:16-18)
It alludes to God’s faithfulness toward Israel, but also to the blood pact Virginia and her followers swore to each other in the school chapel. Does the biblical reference condemn the ultimate blasphemy or is it a message of future hope? How we answer that question will tell us what kind of tragedy we have read. But whichever, I am immensely grateful to Tara Isabella Burton for letting us have a splendid and moving story, worthy to stand on the shelf with The Secret History.
I am most grateful to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC.
Posted on February 1, 2022 Leave a comment
October 10, 2022
religion and the triangulation of desire and the mythologizing of self and standing at the edge of a cliff and wanting to jump and still not jumping. absolutely wild, loved it
August 19, 2022
4 stars--I really liked it.
It's kind of a combo of Megan Abbott's miserable, manipulative girl characters (especially Virginia) and The Secret History's vibe... but add in a dash of Christianity and a sprinkling of social-media-obsessed teenagers. The ending is spectacularly dark and heartbreaking--and probably innevitable. I wish it was longer/deeper, but I enjoyed it. (I'm a sucker for boarding school settings.)
It's kind of a combo of Megan Abbott's miserable, manipulative girl characters (especially Virginia) and The Secret History's vibe... but add in a dash of Christianity and a sprinkling of social-media-obsessed teenagers. The ending is spectacularly dark and heartbreaking--and probably innevitable. I wish it was longer/deeper, but I enjoyed it. (I'm a sucker for boarding school settings.)
Shelved as 'dnf'
March 15, 2022DNF in the middle of chapter 2 - couldn’t go on🥲
July 23, 2022
Four years ago, I read Tara Isabella Burton’s Social Creature, a novel that was one of my favorites that year. I said it was “full of sass and swagger…genius pacing…a novel that should take all of us by storm…the makings of a cult classic.” Did I love it? Yes I did. So imagine my excitement when I saw that she had a new one coming out. Sad to say, The World Cannot Give doesn’t reach the same level. It’s dull, and it takes itself far too seriously.
Nevertheless, my thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy; she is inspired by a novel written by a long-ago alum named Sebastian Webster. Laura yearns to find the “shipwreck of the soul” she finds in Webster’s book. Indeed, Webster has an enthusiastic band of followers at St. Dunstan’s, and so in a sense, Laura has come to the right place.
So we have these elements: a private boarding school—and this setting is in danger of being overused lately, but nothing that excellent writing cannot overcome, although that doesn’t happen here. We also have a slavish clique and hyper-religious students; and we have a whole lot of navel gazing. Or, as the synopsis tells us, “The World Cannot Give is a shocking meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.”
If anything here makes your pulse quicken, by all means, go get this book. As for me, I tried. I did. When I couldn’t push myself through my digital copy after multiple tries, I checked out the audio version from the library; if anything, it was more pretentious and obnoxious than the written version. Yikes. I stuck with the audio version through the first two torturous hours, and then I threw in the towel.
This shipwreck is available to the public now.
Nevertheless, my thanks go to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for the review copy. This book is for sale now.
Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstan’s Academy; she is inspired by a novel written by a long-ago alum named Sebastian Webster. Laura yearns to find the “shipwreck of the soul” she finds in Webster’s book. Indeed, Webster has an enthusiastic band of followers at St. Dunstan’s, and so in a sense, Laura has come to the right place.
So we have these elements: a private boarding school—and this setting is in danger of being overused lately, but nothing that excellent writing cannot overcome, although that doesn’t happen here. We also have a slavish clique and hyper-religious students; and we have a whole lot of navel gazing. Or, as the synopsis tells us, “The World Cannot Give is a shocking meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.”
If anything here makes your pulse quicken, by all means, go get this book. As for me, I tried. I did. When I couldn’t push myself through my digital copy after multiple tries, I checked out the audio version from the library; if anything, it was more pretentious and obnoxious than the written version. Yikes. I stuck with the audio version through the first two torturous hours, and then I threw in the towel.
This shipwreck is available to the public now.
February 3, 2024
rep: lesbian mc, lesbian side characters
tw: sexual assault, revenge porn, lesbophobia, suicide, fire, murder
3.5 ☆
*side-eyeing my little pretentious self from high school*
tw: sexual assault, revenge porn, lesbophobia, suicide, fire, murder
3.5 ☆
*side-eyeing my little pretentious self from high school*
November 16, 2023
Valerie solanas reference? 5 STARS!!!!!!!
April 11, 2022
Find this review and others at Carlene Inspired and on bookstagram.
I am a huge fan of novels that are somehow both literary fiction and also total drama. Tara Isabella Burton is so good about writing about the gossip, lust, and popularity contests that come with young womanhood, while also capturing the dark aspects. The World Cannot Give is an atmospheric, dark academia novel about obsession and how it can consume you. Young Laura Stearns believes that author Sebastian Webster's journey in his novel, All Before Them, is the key to her own life. She lives by his words and finds herself living her dream when she gets into St. Dunstan's, where Sebastian himself lived and wrote prior to his young death. She loves the long standing traditions, the boarding school style living, and the closeness is makes her feel to Webster. Like her previous school though, Laura is not confident in her position in the social structures. She is confident in her desire to be friends with, and be with, Victoria, the pious leader of the choir that lead Evensong. Evensong is transcendent for Laura and soon she finds herself alongside Victoria. What once seems like just friendship becomes more, but Laura's obsession has nothing on Victoria's.
The World Cannot Give can be read as just a new adult thriller if you'd like, but underneath the surface is a darker, deeper tale about love, loss, and the dangers of obsession. Tara Isabella Burton captures the nostalgic feeling any adult has about their youth, while also making you remember the fear, the desperation, and the uncomfortable feeling of incompetency. It's both coming-of-age and terrifying adventure all in one. I loved the reflections Laura has about beliefs, relationships, and sexuality. She begins innocent, sitting on the cusp of womanhood, and as you turn the pages you see her step into herself and let go of the things she once held dear.
It's incredibly difficult to capture this novel in a review. Tara Isabella Burton is a stunning writer, with a skill that makes any story feel otherworldly. The World Cannot Give won't be for everyone, but for those who love a journey into the melodramatic and unique, I highly recommend this novel. I was enchanted and entrapped, lured into the promise of being World-Historical and leaving ones' mark. Like Burton's debut novel, Social Creature, The World Cannot Give is not your standard new adult thriller, there's a level of intrigue there that I cannot describe properly that captures your senses and stays with you.
ARC provided.
I am a huge fan of novels that are somehow both literary fiction and also total drama. Tara Isabella Burton is so good about writing about the gossip, lust, and popularity contests that come with young womanhood, while also capturing the dark aspects. The World Cannot Give is an atmospheric, dark academia novel about obsession and how it can consume you. Young Laura Stearns believes that author Sebastian Webster's journey in his novel, All Before Them, is the key to her own life. She lives by his words and finds herself living her dream when she gets into St. Dunstan's, where Sebastian himself lived and wrote prior to his young death. She loves the long standing traditions, the boarding school style living, and the closeness is makes her feel to Webster. Like her previous school though, Laura is not confident in her position in the social structures. She is confident in her desire to be friends with, and be with, Victoria, the pious leader of the choir that lead Evensong. Evensong is transcendent for Laura and soon she finds herself alongside Victoria. What once seems like just friendship becomes more, but Laura's obsession has nothing on Victoria's.
The World Cannot Give can be read as just a new adult thriller if you'd like, but underneath the surface is a darker, deeper tale about love, loss, and the dangers of obsession. Tara Isabella Burton captures the nostalgic feeling any adult has about their youth, while also making you remember the fear, the desperation, and the uncomfortable feeling of incompetency. It's both coming-of-age and terrifying adventure all in one. I loved the reflections Laura has about beliefs, relationships, and sexuality. She begins innocent, sitting on the cusp of womanhood, and as you turn the pages you see her step into herself and let go of the things she once held dear.
It's incredibly difficult to capture this novel in a review. Tara Isabella Burton is a stunning writer, with a skill that makes any story feel otherworldly. The World Cannot Give won't be for everyone, but for those who love a journey into the melodramatic and unique, I highly recommend this novel. I was enchanted and entrapped, lured into the promise of being World-Historical and leaving ones' mark. Like Burton's debut novel, Social Creature, The World Cannot Give is not your standard new adult thriller, there's a level of intrigue there that I cannot describe properly that captures your senses and stays with you.
ARC provided.
January 19, 2022
Finally a book similar to The Secret History, but now with more religion and queerness!
Dark academia is one of my favorite subgenres, and I'm loving all the novels coming out recently. Tara Isabella Burton is a theologian as well as an author - who better to write about Christian faith at an insular prep school? This is certainly mostly about the boarding school as if its more than a school but something all its own. Which is the magical in this story. It's really hard to beat a well told boarding school book.
With a mix of lighter YA themes and some serious topics that make you think, this book has a bit of something for everything. I will note that the characters do not seem real so if thats something you're searching for you might want to pass this one up but if, like me, you know the magic that is the boarding school with dark twists this is definitely something to pick up!
Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-copy for me to read and leave my honest opinion. I'm so grateful I was able to read this book and I honestly urge everyone to pick it up as soon as possible.
Dark academia is one of my favorite subgenres, and I'm loving all the novels coming out recently. Tara Isabella Burton is a theologian as well as an author - who better to write about Christian faith at an insular prep school? This is certainly mostly about the boarding school as if its more than a school but something all its own. Which is the magical in this story. It's really hard to beat a well told boarding school book.
With a mix of lighter YA themes and some serious topics that make you think, this book has a bit of something for everything. I will note that the characters do not seem real so if thats something you're searching for you might want to pass this one up but if, like me, you know the magic that is the boarding school with dark twists this is definitely something to pick up!
Thank you to netgalley for providing an e-copy for me to read and leave my honest opinion. I'm so grateful I was able to read this book and I honestly urge everyone to pick it up as soon as possible.
July 24, 2022
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this novel, it's a solid dark academia book and it does its job pretty well. It also features lots of references to religion which were an added element that I personally think was used well to develop the story. I must say that the characters are overall pretty bland and there's only one who truly stands out, Virginia. I believe she was a well-made character for a dark academia novel and she was definitely the one who drove the story forward, in every sense possible.
If you're into dark academia you might like this, unfortunately this was just average for me and I didn't like it as much as I was hoping.
If you're into dark academia you might like this, unfortunately this was just average for me and I didn't like it as much as I was hoping.
Want to read
October 21, 2021ARC received!! Thank you, Simon & Schuster!!
This sounds like my kind of story. Can y'all believe the quality of books set to be released in 2022? It's going to be...
This sounds like my kind of story. Can y'all believe the quality of books set to be released in 2022? It's going to be...
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