![]() ![]() ![]() 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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