Today it's a pleasure to take part in the BlogTour The Truants by Kate Weinberg.
Kate Weinberg was born and lives in London. She studied English at Oxford and creative writing in East Anglia. She has worked as a slush pile reader, a bookshop assistant, a journalist and a ghost writer. The Truants is her first novel.
About the book
People disappear when they most want to be seen
Jess Walker, middle child of a middle-class family, has perfected the art of vanishing in plain sight. But when she arrives at a concrete university campus under flat, grey, East Anglian skies, her world flares with colour.
Drawn into a tightly-knit group of rule breakers – led by their maverick teacher, Lorna Clay – Jess begins to experiment with a new version of herself. But the dynamic between the friends begins to darken as they share secrets, lovers and finally a tragedy. Soon Jess is thrown up against the question she fears most: what is the true cost of an extraordinary life?
This is very much the story of every young adult who ends up discovering complete freedom in the form of university for the first time, perhaps more so when the place has an aura of elitism. Jess fawns over her lecturer and equally over the people she comes in contact with.
Their worlds are different, hence why the pull is so strong. The need to belong and become part of something so bright, wild and free is bigger than the need to be safe. The connections she makes are electrifying and they transform not only the person she was, but also the person she will be one day.
I loved the feel and voice of this read. Very Room with a View aesthetic meets The Girls by Cline. The devastating upheaval of emotions when you're coming-of-age and finding yourself. Experiencing the first throes of passion, desire and attraction. Enjoying the freedom of not being tethered by the rules of your childhood and yet somehow reluctantly acknowledging the need for structure when you abandon it completely.
Weinberg delivers a constantly moving river of prose, which surges with the ambiguity of love and life. Moments in time become ethereal, due to the romanticised slant the world of academia and literature is slathered in. The characters become players in a cheap daytime soap and by doing so burst the bubble of egotistical hedonistic culture they have all become immersed in. There is no escaping life itself even if you choose to hide from it for a while - eventually it will catch up with you.
I enjoyed the read. I thought it was subtle, driven by the complexity of the emotions and characters, but ultimately by the powerful writing.
Buy The Truants at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing; pub date out in paperback June 2020 - £8.99. Buy at Amazon com.
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