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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I love this genre of psychotic prep schoolers who are going to take of the world a commit a little murder
This sorry captured me from the first page. Nothing is as it seems, everyone is scheming and you only ever glance at the surface. Poor Laura is a love sick idealist trying to balance both sides, choosing nothing and just along for the ride. But it’s dangerous to be the yes man when you don’t even understand the extremism around you.
This sorry captured me from the first page. Nothing is as it seems, everyone is scheming and you only ever glance at the surface. Poor Laura is a love sick idealist trying to balance both sides, choosing nothing and just along for the ride. But it’s dangerous to be the yes man when you don’t even understand the extremism around you.
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I almost never give disclaimers on reviews because, personally, I don’t think they should be necessary, but I really hated this book so I’ll put one here. Disclaimer: Reviews are subjective. Reading is subjective. My opinions are mine, and mine alone, and I am not being mean for pointing out the reasons I did not like this book. It is not mean to the author to write a negative review of their work. Writing a novel is an immense feat, and I will not diminish that, but that does not exempt the work from criticism. Once something is released for public consumption, the public is allowed to react to it however they so choose. Reviews are for readers.
With all that said, can the world give me back the time I spent reading this book?
Jokes aside, this is the worst book I’ve read in a while. I hesitate to classify any book as objectively bad because I like to think there’s an audience for just about anything. And while I can tell you exactly the kind of person I think would enjoy this book, in this case, I don’t believe having an audience saves it from being a bad book. The World Cannot Give has a very clear goal. This book desperately strives to find its place among the esoterica of authors like M. L. Rio and Donna Tartt, it craves to be on shelves alongside R.F. Kuang’s Babel. Burton, however, falls short of emulating these stories in nearly every way that matters. This book accomplishes nothing, save for blatant self-indulgence. It fails to reach the lyricism of Babel’s prose, the intrigue of Rio’s If We Were Villains, the reprehensible yet captivating characters of Tartt’s The Secret History. This book missed the mark in a way that calls to mind a child trying to shoot a basketball on an NBA regulation net. Burton’s self-aggrandizing writing and weak characters have the emotional depth of a kiddie pool, and her prose is littered with awkward verbiage and inconsistent tones. This is a cheap imitation of a rich genre, and not worth the shelf space it takes up.
The writing is clunky, awkward, and tonally inconsistent. Stretches of narration are told in short, choppy, perfunctory sentences that read with all the grace of a box of dishes falling down a staircase. “Character saw x. They did y. They felt z.” There is no rhythm, no meter, no flow. Paragraphs are stilted and boring, lacking any measure of linguistic richness. Occasionally littered throughout the story, however, are inappropriately Elizabethan monologues that are a complete tonal mismatch with the rest of the novel’s painfully contemporary prose. While varying tones can be a powerful literary tool, it needs to be done in a deliberate way. This could include things like changing tone between a character’s internal and external expression (i.e.; thoughts versus spoken dialogue), or tonal shifts depending on the POV characters. Burton, however, slips between tones like she meant to be writing two different novels. Tones shift mid-paragraph, and with no regard for character nor context. This novel shows a grasp of language that is amateur at best and would have benefitted deeply from a few rounds of very intense editing.
This book doesn’t seem to understand the themes of the story it is trying to tell. This was billed as a novel exploring religious zealotry, queer desire, and themes of desire and power and wanting more from the world. I do believe that it tried to do that. The text itself just doesn’t seem to understand these themes enough to interrogate them in any significant capacity. Instead, the book simply shows us characters that are religious, queer, or want more out of life, and then those characters do things. Burton fails to use these things as motivations or guideposts, as character foils or fatal flaws, or anything else that would require this novel do anything more than just relay a series of events to the reader. In place of an exploration of how the world shapes us, we’re given a bunch of people doing things. If this book spent half as much time developing its themes and characters as it did trying to convince the reader of its own profundity, it might have been worth reading.
It doesn’t surprise me, though, that this book falls thematically flat, because the way the characters interrogate the in-world text that inspires their actions shows a stunning lack of capacity for intellectual understanding of media. For those unaware, a driving element of the novel is the passion the main characters share for the novel written by a previous student of their boarding school. This novel is their guidepost, their template for how life should be lived, and yet, in spite of this, they seem to have taken very little from it. In fact, throughout the whole novel, there are precisely three things the characters take away from their beloved novel: a desire to be “World-Historical”, a disdain for the “sclerotic modern world”, and a longing to experience a “shipwreck of the soul”. And even from those three things, the characters never express any understanding of what they actually mean. Burton simply repeats these phrases over and over (and over and over and over) again, until they have as little meaning for the reader as they seem to for the characters themselves. The characters, and the novel itself, seem unable to discern the difference between being passionate enough about a cause to die for it and looking for a cause to die for. While either could be thematically interesting if explored well, they are not the same, and should not be portrayed as such.
Their lack of capacity for literary analysis was far from the weakest point for these characters. There is a difference between characters that are unlikeable, asinine, or otherwise awful people, and characters that are just badly created. The works Burton tries to emulate are rich with the former, while The World Cannot Give provides only the latter. Characters like Bonnie, Freddy, Isobel (for the majority of the novel), and Miranda are all portrayed as vapid and shallow, and are coated in what I can only assume is the author’s own disdain for people she views this way. They are nothing more than caricatures of how someone who has spent their life avoiding interrogating their own internalized misogyny may see modern women. They are the embodiment of the “sclerotic modern world” our main characters hate so much, but they aren’t developed enough to be anything more than a tired cliche. Other background characters like the men of the choir are virtually all interchangeable, because none of them has enough distinct personality traits to make it worth even learning their names. This lack of development leads to stilted and awkward scenes, interactions that make no sense and have no impact, and a complete lack of emotional attachment from the reader. The dialogue is poorly written and littered with cheap shots that serve no purpose other than to put down those characters that represent the kind of modernity the narrative finds so deeply intolerable.
Our main character, the reader’s entry point to the story, is Laura Stearns. Laura is described as being a sensitive character who yearns to follow in the footsteps of her favourite author and become “World-Historical.” However, Burton either cannot or will not write emotion in a way that resonates with the reader, instead opting to have Laura simply cry every time we need to know she feels something. Laura’s only personality traits are crying, loving a Sebastian Webster novel she doesn’t even seem to understand, and doing everything Virginia tells her to do. Oh, and the repressed sexuality that the author tells us is there, but doesn’t actually explore or dissect in any meaningful way. She is obsessed with being “World-Historical” but can’t handle the idea of her actions having consequences, she cries a lot, and she worships Virginia. I have nothing else to say about Laura Stearns because there is nothing else to say about Laura Stearns. She barely even rises to the level of a real character, and nothing about her is significant or memorable.
But where this book is truly unforgivable, is in the characterization of Virginia Strauss. Virginia Strauss is meant to be the catalyst, the spark that ignites the fire inside Laura and everyone else she meets. She’s described as intense, a perfectionist, magnetic, hypnotic, and any other number of bold adjectives. We are told she is all this and more, told she is so powerful and so irreverent that no one could help but follow her. Instead, we are given a flat, lifeless bully with no depth of character. Not one thing Virginia says or does throughout the novel is memorable, interesting, or engaging. We are told people can’t help but follow her, but nothing in the narrative suggests there is any reason for this other than because the author said so. This one felt personal to me because I love this kind of character when done well. So when I say that this book let me down, I mean that it dropped me off a cliff (no joke intended - iykyk).
This book wants to be about the dangers of a person with this kind of influence. How their ambition and devotion often come with a dark side, and how easily the undertow of their passion can sweep away those they encounter. Virginia yearns to be like Henry Winter from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, or Richard Stirling from M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains. Instead, Virginia Strauss reminds me of Hardin from Anna Todd’s After - an abusive, underdeveloped bully who is idealized and romanticized by the narrative because the text needs us to forgive them. One reason for this is the previously discussed flatness of Virginia’s character. Another is the fact that the narrative is too afraid to wholeheartedly condemn her. Burton is too afraid to commit to making Virginia the villain of the story, unwilling to fully embrace the idea that her wickedness could be the core of her person. Even when Virginia experiences consequences for her actions, the narrative strives to make sure these consequences are never a result of, or even a condemnation of, her own flaws. The text bends over backwards to absolve her of any serious wrongdoing, to make her the victim of a cruel world and a crueler cast, instead of the architect of her own misfortune. Even the novel’s halfhearted attempts to rebuke the worst of Virginia’s behaviour are undercut by its commitment to her martyrdom.
I would like to be very clear when I say there is a big difference between an unlikable character and a bad one. This kind of hyper-intense, singularly devoted character exists in many different forms of media, some examples being Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls, or Libby Rhodes from The Atlas. These are characters that, if I knew someone like them in real life, I wouldn’t necessarily invite to board game night at my place, but I find them compelling in their respective narratives, and their presence makes the story better. So when I say I did not like the character of Virginia Strauss, it has nothing to do with what she is like as a person and everything to do with what she brings in the context of the story. Because she is so underdeveloped and lacklustre, she is incapable of providing the kind of narrative intrigue that better-crafted characters of this disposition are able to bring.
This book was written for the kind of person who goes through life believing they are the only person capable of complex thought and emotion. The kind of person who walks around lamenting the fact that “no one understands them” while reducing the people they know to shallow caricatures because they refuse to believe anyone but them is capable of a rich inner life. The kind of person who begs the world to let them find another person like them while ignoring the fact that they likely meet people like this every day. To be completely clear, I do not mean to imply that this description applies to every person who enjoyed this book, but I do believe the kind of person who thinks this way is the novel’s intended audience. That is the only explanation I can think of for the characterization of people like Bonnie, like Miranda, and even like Freddy, Brad, and Anton. This book portrays them as flat, lifeless, and shallow because it sees people like them as flat, lifeless, and shallow. This book believes that people like Laura, Virginia, and, to some degree, Isobel are the only types of people capable of depth, and, ironically, in doing so robs them of that very depth of character.
This book simply failed to achieve what it set out to do. It wanted to be a dark and complex story about a captivating and powerful character, and to interrogate the themes of religious devotion and queer love. It didn’t do that. It was a half-baked recounting of things done by characters that might almost pass for people if you squint really hard. The writing was awkward, the themes were under-explored, and even the plot points that were interesting were done so badly it was impossible to be emotionally invested. I truly hope this is the worst book I read this year, because if I read another book I hate this much, I will not be happy.
*Spoiler Warning*
One final gripe I have with this novel is the pointlessness, and absurdity, of Isobel’s death. For much of the novel, Isobel is little more than a stereotype of a blue-haired liberal - yelling about social justice and the backwards ways of the establishment while promoting a lifestyle the narrative condemns as perverse. Burton tries to create depth in her relationship with Virginia, and this halfhearted character development culminates in the two girls jumping to their deaths, choosing to end their lives together. The problem I have with this is, ironically, pointed out by Burton herself, in the form of a conversation Miranda has with Laura.
We as the reader know that Virginia planned to kill the choir boys when she set that fire. She kills herself because she knows there is no path forward for her after she kills them, but she believes she cannot let them live. However, as Miranda points out to Laura, Isobel didn’t know the boys would be there. Isobel intended to light the fire as a statement, an act of violence against an institution. She tells Miranda she is planning something that might warrant her expulsion, but that the statement it made would be worth it. So why, then, did she choose to jump to her death with Virginia? Did Virginia reveal the true plan to her? When? Why did she choose to jump rather than try to stop it? If Virginia never told her, why would she take her own life after what was supposed to be such a powerful statement for her? Was she aware of the plan all along? If so, then why was she worried about expulsion if she knew she would be dead?
I know there won’t be a satisfying answer to my questions on this issue, I doubt Burton ever really thought it through. The idea of ending the book with a lover’s death pact was just too romantic and “World-Historical” (sorry) for her to pass up by putting any critical thought into the logistics.
With all that said, can the world give me back the time I spent reading this book?
Jokes aside, this is the worst book I’ve read in a while. I hesitate to classify any book as objectively bad because I like to think there’s an audience for just about anything. And while I can tell you exactly the kind of person I think would enjoy this book, in this case, I don’t believe having an audience saves it from being a bad book. The World Cannot Give has a very clear goal. This book desperately strives to find its place among the esoterica of authors like M. L. Rio and Donna Tartt, it craves to be on shelves alongside R.F. Kuang’s Babel. Burton, however, falls short of emulating these stories in nearly every way that matters. This book accomplishes nothing, save for blatant self-indulgence. It fails to reach the lyricism of Babel’s prose, the intrigue of Rio’s If We Were Villains, the reprehensible yet captivating characters of Tartt’s The Secret History. This book missed the mark in a way that calls to mind a child trying to shoot a basketball on an NBA regulation net. Burton’s self-aggrandizing writing and weak characters have the emotional depth of a kiddie pool, and her prose is littered with awkward verbiage and inconsistent tones. This is a cheap imitation of a rich genre, and not worth the shelf space it takes up.
The writing is clunky, awkward, and tonally inconsistent. Stretches of narration are told in short, choppy, perfunctory sentences that read with all the grace of a box of dishes falling down a staircase. “Character saw x. They did y. They felt z.” There is no rhythm, no meter, no flow. Paragraphs are stilted and boring, lacking any measure of linguistic richness. Occasionally littered throughout the story, however, are inappropriately Elizabethan monologues that are a complete tonal mismatch with the rest of the novel’s painfully contemporary prose. While varying tones can be a powerful literary tool, it needs to be done in a deliberate way. This could include things like changing tone between a character’s internal and external expression (i.e.; thoughts versus spoken dialogue), or tonal shifts depending on the POV characters. Burton, however, slips between tones like she meant to be writing two different novels. Tones shift mid-paragraph, and with no regard for character nor context. This novel shows a grasp of language that is amateur at best and would have benefitted deeply from a few rounds of very intense editing.
This book doesn’t seem to understand the themes of the story it is trying to tell. This was billed as a novel exploring religious zealotry, queer desire, and themes of desire and power and wanting more from the world. I do believe that it tried to do that. The text itself just doesn’t seem to understand these themes enough to interrogate them in any significant capacity. Instead, the book simply shows us characters that are religious, queer, or want more out of life, and then those characters do things. Burton fails to use these things as motivations or guideposts, as character foils or fatal flaws, or anything else that would require this novel do anything more than just relay a series of events to the reader. In place of an exploration of how the world shapes us, we’re given a bunch of people doing things. If this book spent half as much time developing its themes and characters as it did trying to convince the reader of its own profundity, it might have been worth reading.
It doesn’t surprise me, though, that this book falls thematically flat, because the way the characters interrogate the in-world text that inspires their actions shows a stunning lack of capacity for intellectual understanding of media. For those unaware, a driving element of the novel is the passion the main characters share for the novel written by a previous student of their boarding school. This novel is their guidepost, their template for how life should be lived, and yet, in spite of this, they seem to have taken very little from it. In fact, throughout the whole novel, there are precisely three things the characters take away from their beloved novel: a desire to be “World-Historical”, a disdain for the “sclerotic modern world”, and a longing to experience a “shipwreck of the soul”. And even from those three things, the characters never express any understanding of what they actually mean. Burton simply repeats these phrases over and over (and over and over and over) again, until they have as little meaning for the reader as they seem to for the characters themselves. The characters, and the novel itself, seem unable to discern the difference between being passionate enough about a cause to die for it and looking for a cause to die for. While either could be thematically interesting if explored well, they are not the same, and should not be portrayed as such.
Their lack of capacity for literary analysis was far from the weakest point for these characters. There is a difference between characters that are unlikeable, asinine, or otherwise awful people, and characters that are just badly created. The works Burton tries to emulate are rich with the former, while The World Cannot Give provides only the latter. Characters like Bonnie, Freddy, Isobel (for the majority of the novel), and Miranda are all portrayed as vapid and shallow, and are coated in what I can only assume is the author’s own disdain for people she views this way. They are nothing more than caricatures of how someone who has spent their life avoiding interrogating their own internalized misogyny may see modern women. They are the embodiment of the “sclerotic modern world” our main characters hate so much, but they aren’t developed enough to be anything more than a tired cliche. Other background characters like the men of the choir are virtually all interchangeable, because none of them has enough distinct personality traits to make it worth even learning their names. This lack of development leads to stilted and awkward scenes, interactions that make no sense and have no impact, and a complete lack of emotional attachment from the reader. The dialogue is poorly written and littered with cheap shots that serve no purpose other than to put down those characters that represent the kind of modernity the narrative finds so deeply intolerable.
Our main character, the reader’s entry point to the story, is Laura Stearns. Laura is described as being a sensitive character who yearns to follow in the footsteps of her favourite author and become “World-Historical.” However, Burton either cannot or will not write emotion in a way that resonates with the reader, instead opting to have Laura simply cry every time we need to know she feels something. Laura’s only personality traits are crying, loving a Sebastian Webster novel she doesn’t even seem to understand, and doing everything Virginia tells her to do. Oh, and the repressed sexuality that the author tells us is there, but doesn’t actually explore or dissect in any meaningful way. She is obsessed with being “World-Historical” but can’t handle the idea of her actions having consequences, she cries a lot, and she worships Virginia. I have nothing else to say about Laura Stearns because there is nothing else to say about Laura Stearns. She barely even rises to the level of a real character, and nothing about her is significant or memorable.
But where this book is truly unforgivable, is in the characterization of Virginia Strauss. Virginia Strauss is meant to be the catalyst, the spark that ignites the fire inside Laura and everyone else she meets. She’s described as intense, a perfectionist, magnetic, hypnotic, and any other number of bold adjectives. We are told she is all this and more, told she is so powerful and so irreverent that no one could help but follow her. Instead, we are given a flat, lifeless bully with no depth of character. Not one thing Virginia says or does throughout the novel is memorable, interesting, or engaging. We are told people can’t help but follow her, but nothing in the narrative suggests there is any reason for this other than because the author said so. This one felt personal to me because I love this kind of character when done well. So when I say that this book let me down, I mean that it dropped me off a cliff (no joke intended - iykyk).
This book wants to be about the dangers of a person with this kind of influence. How their ambition and devotion often come with a dark side, and how easily the undertow of their passion can sweep away those they encounter. Virginia yearns to be like Henry Winter from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, or Richard Stirling from M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains. Instead, Virginia Strauss reminds me of Hardin from Anna Todd’s After - an abusive, underdeveloped bully who is idealized and romanticized by the narrative because the text needs us to forgive them. One reason for this is the previously discussed flatness of Virginia’s character. Another is the fact that the narrative is too afraid to wholeheartedly condemn her. Burton is too afraid to commit to making Virginia the villain of the story, unwilling to fully embrace the idea that her wickedness could be the core of her person. Even when Virginia experiences consequences for her actions, the narrative strives to make sure these consequences are never a result of, or even a condemnation of, her own flaws. The text bends over backwards to absolve her of any serious wrongdoing, to make her the victim of a cruel world and a crueler cast, instead of the architect of her own misfortune. Even the novel’s halfhearted attempts to rebuke the worst of Virginia’s behaviour are undercut by its commitment to her martyrdom.
I would like to be very clear when I say there is a big difference between an unlikable character and a bad one. This kind of hyper-intense, singularly devoted character exists in many different forms of media, some examples being Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls, or Libby Rhodes from The Atlas. These are characters that, if I knew someone like them in real life, I wouldn’t necessarily invite to board game night at my place, but I find them compelling in their respective narratives, and their presence makes the story better. So when I say I did not like the character of Virginia Strauss, it has nothing to do with what she is like as a person and everything to do with what she brings in the context of the story. Because she is so underdeveloped and lacklustre, she is incapable of providing the kind of narrative intrigue that better-crafted characters of this disposition are able to bring.
This book was written for the kind of person who goes through life believing they are the only person capable of complex thought and emotion. The kind of person who walks around lamenting the fact that “no one understands them” while reducing the people they know to shallow caricatures because they refuse to believe anyone but them is capable of a rich inner life. The kind of person who begs the world to let them find another person like them while ignoring the fact that they likely meet people like this every day. To be completely clear, I do not mean to imply that this description applies to every person who enjoyed this book, but I do believe the kind of person who thinks this way is the novel’s intended audience. That is the only explanation I can think of for the characterization of people like Bonnie, like Miranda, and even like Freddy, Brad, and Anton. This book portrays them as flat, lifeless, and shallow because it sees people like them as flat, lifeless, and shallow. This book believes that people like Laura, Virginia, and, to some degree, Isobel are the only types of people capable of depth, and, ironically, in doing so robs them of that very depth of character.
This book simply failed to achieve what it set out to do. It wanted to be a dark and complex story about a captivating and powerful character, and to interrogate the themes of religious devotion and queer love. It didn’t do that. It was a half-baked recounting of things done by characters that might almost pass for people if you squint really hard. The writing was awkward, the themes were under-explored, and even the plot points that were interesting were done so badly it was impossible to be emotionally invested. I truly hope this is the worst book I read this year, because if I read another book I hate this much, I will not be happy.
*Spoiler Warning*
One final gripe I have with this novel is the pointlessness, and absurdity, of Isobel’s death. For much of the novel, Isobel is little more than a stereotype of a blue-haired liberal - yelling about social justice and the backwards ways of the establishment while promoting a lifestyle the narrative condemns as perverse. Burton tries to create depth in her relationship with Virginia, and this halfhearted character development culminates in the two girls jumping to their deaths, choosing to end their lives together. The problem I have with this is, ironically, pointed out by Burton herself, in the form of a conversation Miranda has with Laura.
We as the reader know that Virginia planned to kill the choir boys when she set that fire. She kills herself because she knows there is no path forward for her after she kills them, but she believes she cannot let them live. However, as Miranda points out to Laura, Isobel didn’t know the boys would be there. Isobel intended to light the fire as a statement, an act of violence against an institution. She tells Miranda she is planning something that might warrant her expulsion, but that the statement it made would be worth it. So why, then, did she choose to jump to her death with Virginia? Did Virginia reveal the true plan to her? When? Why did she choose to jump rather than try to stop it? If Virginia never told her, why would she take her own life after what was supposed to be such a powerful statement for her? Was she aware of the plan all along? If so, then why was she worried about expulsion if she knew she would be dead?
I know there won’t be a satisfying answer to my questions on this issue, I doubt Burton ever really thought it through. The idea of ending the book with a lover’s death pact was just too romantic and “World-Historical” (sorry) for her to pass up by putting any critical thought into the logistics.
4.25 stars
High school can be hard. Especially when you’re empathic, which it seems Laura must be. Laura feels things so deeply. So when she reads a book written by Sebastian Weber, she becomes obsessed with his life and writing. Laura convinces her parents to allow her to attend the private boarding school that Weber attended. In fact, Weber is interred under the chapel on campus.
At her first Evensong (Friday night chapel,) Laura sees Virginia singing and suddenly, Laura has a new obsession. Virginia befriends Laura, and suddenly Laura is doing things she never imagined. Laura becomes a part of the school choir - which is limited to Virginia and five boys prior to Laura’s admittance. Laura starts running with Virginia. Essentially, Laura becomes Virginia’s constant companion and supporter.
But Virginia isn’t what Laura thinks she is. Most of the school realizes this, but in her obsession, Laura can’t see past her own love for Virginia. Laura loves being a part of the inner sanctum of Virginia’s group of choir boys. Laura will do anything for Virginia. Anything. Whether she feels conflict about it or not. To what ends will Laura go to win Virginia’s love?
Some of the hardest years of our lives are in high school when we’re trying to find ourselves. Burton writes this novel with a complete understanding of being the outcast, being the one always wishing she had an inner circle. There is always someone willing to take advantage of those people, and Burton has written a character in Virginia that is more than willing to exploit a friendship for her own gain.
This novel really touches on a lot of the struggles teens face - sexuality, friendship, self-esteem, substance abuse. It also shows us what happens when someone is made to face her own imperfections.
Very well written and riveting, I would definitely recommend this book.
High school can be hard. Especially when you’re empathic, which it seems Laura must be. Laura feels things so deeply. So when she reads a book written by Sebastian Weber, she becomes obsessed with his life and writing. Laura convinces her parents to allow her to attend the private boarding school that Weber attended. In fact, Weber is interred under the chapel on campus.
At her first Evensong (Friday night chapel,) Laura sees Virginia singing and suddenly, Laura has a new obsession. Virginia befriends Laura, and suddenly Laura is doing things she never imagined. Laura becomes a part of the school choir - which is limited to Virginia and five boys prior to Laura’s admittance. Laura starts running with Virginia. Essentially, Laura becomes Virginia’s constant companion and supporter.
But Virginia isn’t what Laura thinks she is. Most of the school realizes this, but in her obsession, Laura can’t see past her own love for Virginia. Laura loves being a part of the inner sanctum of Virginia’s group of choir boys. Laura will do anything for Virginia. Anything. Whether she feels conflict about it or not. To what ends will Laura go to win Virginia’s love?
Some of the hardest years of our lives are in high school when we’re trying to find ourselves. Burton writes this novel with a complete understanding of being the outcast, being the one always wishing she had an inner circle. There is always someone willing to take advantage of those people, and Burton has written a character in Virginia that is more than willing to exploit a friendship for her own gain.
This novel really touches on a lot of the struggles teens face - sexuality, friendship, self-esteem, substance abuse. It also shows us what happens when someone is made to face her own imperfections.
Very well written and riveting, I would definitely recommend this book.
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A fast read and enjoyable for the most part, for all that it's a little shallow and derivative (especially with regards to the characters, most of whom were very two-dimensional). I mean, it's a "dark academia" novel so of course it's a bit unoriginal. It really seemed like this was sure to be a solid 3 stars... until that ending, hm. Not sure about that.
I did enjoy the character of Virginia (again, until the ending) - she reminded me of a lot of young reactionaries I've known, with the dressing all in black and inappropriately formally, converting to Christianity and being way too intense about it, repressed about her own sexuality, etc.
Spoiler
idk, I think the book either should have gone in the direction that Virginia is a fallible human being after all, and is destroyed by having her sex tape leaked, OR that she's utterly amoral and capable of murdering 5 or 6 people. The way Burton tried to do both here just didn't quite work. Also, Isabel Zhao going along with all that (even though she didn't know there would be murders, but still, she fell completely under Virginia's spell), and the suicide pact, seems implausible for her prior character... which was one of the worst ones for being two-dimensional and cliché already. She's a pink-haired lesbian of colour who's a social justice warrior and wants to tear down problematic statues; how nuanced and original.I did enjoy the character of Virginia (again, until the ending) - she reminded me of a lot of young reactionaries I've known, with the dressing all in black and inappropriately formally, converting to Christianity and being way too intense about it, repressed about her own sexuality, etc.
The World Cannot Give is dark academia at its finest, and deserves a place alongside The Secret History. It’s a tale of hero worship, toxic friendships, and queer desire, told in lush prose. Laura and her friends are convincingly obsessed with so-called World Historical ideals while being entirely self-absorbed and petty in their personal lives. It was a gripping read with a satisfyingly tragic ending and I recommend it to any lover of the genre.
Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.
Thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for an early copy of this book.