Rating: 4/5
Review:
An impressive debut
Overall, I enjoyed The Truants, but it did drag a bit in the middle
especially.
The book is narrated
by Jess, looking back six years or so to 2012 when she was an
eighteen-year-old first-year student at an unnamed university bearing
a strong resemblance to the University Of East Anglia. Studying
English, she falls under the spell of Lorna, a charismatic female
lecturer, and also of a wealthy, drug-dependent fellow student and
her maverick older boyfriend. It’s a story of love, desire,
betrayal, lies and growing up.
Kate Weinberg writes
very well. The book is literary without ever becoming pretentious
and she creates very believable characters with a fine sense of
growing foreboding. Jess’s voice is excellently done and it’s
very readable, with a death and important revelations making the
second half of the book very gripping.
Perhaps it’s me –
as a gent in his mid-60s I’m perhaps not the ideal audience for a
lengthy exploration of the emotional life of a slightly withdrawn
post-adolescent woman – but I almost gave up around half way. It
was all well written and well done, but it began to feel a bit
familiar and drawn out. I really needed something to actually
happen; fortunately, I persisted and things did happen soon enough
for me to enjoy the second half very much.
So, a slightly
qualified recommendation but this is an impressive debut and I’ll
certainly be looking out for Kate Weinberg’s next book.
(My thanks to
Bloomsbury for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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