The Book: Love and Virtue
The Author: Diana Reid
Stars: 4
It's book group tomorrow night, and I've fielding the questions for the night. And here I was with COVID brain thinking that this book group book might have some questions online so I wouldn't have to think.
Wrong.
So, I'm here to try and work out what I feel about this book, which I finished this evening, just in time, for our monthly meeting.
So, what it's about. The Ultimo Press website provides the following blurb:
"Michaela and Eve are two bright, bold women who befriend each other their first year at a residential college at university, where they live in adjacent rooms. They could not be more different; one assured and popular – the other uncertain and eager-to-please. But something happens one night in O-week – a drunken encounter, a foggy memory that will force them to confront the realities of consent and wrestle with the dynamics of power.
Initially bonded by their wit and sharp eye for the colleges’ mix of material wealth and moral poverty, Michaela and Eve soon discover how fragile friendship is, and how capable of betrayal they both are."
The book looks at so much more than this - entitlement, power, wealth, gender politics, consent. It also begs the reader to ask a lot of questions of themselves. What would you do in the same situation? Who owns a story? What makes a friend? And how can you change the establishment?
For me, there were a few elements of the book that were a little triggering, but a lot of this was me seeing a younger version of myself in Michaela being fish out of water - in her case, the kid from out of town at the college on a scholarship. In my case, I was a very young 17-year-old with her first taste of freedom. Also, having lived three years at a university college, I could recognise some of what was going on. Thankfully, the college where I lived was co-ed and had a better environment that those of the colleges in the book. (It was also over 30 years ago and things change).
The depictions of college life, from what I remember, was pretty bang on. I'm unsure whether the author has lived at a college or obtained her material from The Red Zone Report. Thankfully, when I was at college, things weren't as extreme as what was described in the book. Nor was there social media (thank goodness).
But what did I think about this book?
I think the questions that came for me was were why Michaela and Eve were friends. I found the latter deeply unpleasant - an entitled wanker if you ask me.
Also, who owns a story? And what rights do you have with that story?
And of course, there are the murky lines of consent - and those questions of what would you do in the same situation?
Yes, I'm being obtuse here as there's a lot to unpack here and I don't want to give too much of the story away. I did a bit of eye rolling at Michaela and some of her decisions, but then again, at 18, who doesn't make some bad choices?
There were not that many likeable characters in the book either. Eve gave me the shits, and a lot of the St Thomas's boys melded into a lump of entitled shit heads who were going to end up as investment bankers.
But would I recommend this book? Yes. Some have called Diana Reid an Australian Sally Rooney. She's definitely on the mark with her themes of friendship, consent and storytelling. In some ways, this book comes as a bit of a warning as to what can happen when elite institutions remain unchallenged.
The writing is also very good.
It's worth a look.
Thankfully, I've found some questions for tomorrow after a bit more digging. They're not quite the questions I'd been asking, but they will have to do.
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