![]() ![]() It’s something which feels particularly pertinent at Oxford, a university which carries that same feeling of competition and claustrophobia. This could perhaps be excused if the reader’s expectations weren’t set up that way going in: but it’s all there from the start, from the testimonial on the front which begins ‘Like Donna Tartt’s A Secret History…’ to the cover which pays a striking homage to the 1992 classic.īut there is something intensely compelling about ‘dark academia’, a phrase which I’ve seen coined for this unique ‘pretentious-students-killing-their-classmates’ genre. Rio, about a group of Shakespeare-obsessed actors.Ī large problem with If We Were Villains, in fact, is that it rests in The Secret History’s long shadow. No, I’m not describing Donna Tartt’s emblematic novel The Secret History, about a group of pretentious classics students: instead this is If We Were Villains, a 2017 novel by M.L. A group of students studying a notoriously cliquey subject at arts college become embroiled in guilt after the death of one of their number, a secret which threatens to tear them apart. ![]()
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