Sixteen-year-old Laura Stearns has left her home in Las Vegas to attend St. Dunstan’s Academy, a ritzy private school in Maine. Laura feels things deeply and cries easily and she is drawn to St. Dunstan’s because of its connection to Sebastian Oliver Webster, author of a singular novel called All Before Them.
He understood about angels, about heroes, about lattices of voices. He understood about beauty and meaning, and about World-History, which he always capitalizes. He understood about green morning light, and also about slant rhymes […] She doesn’t know who she is, not loving him.
The main character in Webster’s novel–a character based on Webster himself– attended St. Dunstan’s and Laura is anxious to walk in his footsteps. She is sure she will meet like-minded students and she does: Virginia Strauss and the band of five boys who make up the school’s choir. Virginia is clearly ‘other’ and “Laura has never seen anyone more beautiful in her life.”
Virginia rules the choir with an iron will.
The choirboys–all handsome; all ebullient; all terrifying–are always with her. She holds court at the head of the table, or at the center of the picnic blanket. Her eyes are always sharp. She rarely smiles.
But you know what they say about power? Yeah, there’s that because as she draws Laura into the choir’s orbit we earn, as Laura does, that Virginia has a black core of narcissism. She demands moral perfection and complete loyalty and when she does not get it, things go sideways.
Luce [is reading] wrote a pretty scathing review of The World Cannot Give and it’s worth a read. That said, I enjoyed this book. I think the pretentiousness of these characters and their desire to achieve what Webster calls the “shipwreck of the soul” suits the isolated setting and lack of (living) adult role models. The one person who might have had a positive influence, Reverend Tipton, struggles to control Virginia and actually seems more interested in one-upping her than in restoring or maintaining balance.
The World Cannot Give is a book that falls into the dark academia category and it has the requisite characteristics. It’s a slow burn novel and I will agree that not much happens with the exception of a lot of banal conversations and posing, but I enjoyed the book nonetheless.
The Ludic Reader 