Saturday, June 20, 2020

THE TRUANTS, by Kate Weinberg











Literature -- 4 1/2 stars




College freshman, Jess Walker, chose to study in East Anglia solely because of Dr. Lorna Clay, a well known member of the English Department.  It doesn't take long for Jess and her new circle of friends to fall under Dr. Clay's spell, a spell that is darker and more dangerous than they are prepared to resist. ----- There is so much made of this professor's charismatic seminars that the first session a reader is exposed to comes as something of a disappointment.  Never fear, the let down of pure doggerel, extolled by stock characters--the rich sex pot, the naive innocent, the sincere young man, the slightly shady older guy--is only temporary.  In this case, it doesn't matter that we've seen these same characters in countless other novels, because it's what Ms. Weinberg does with the characters that makes this story so good.  Dark and moody, with an ending that is as inevitable as it is unexpected.

No comments:

Post a Comment