A review by brittbat
The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton

2.0

I see what Burton is trying to do. She pits three different factions of belief--religious tradition, progressive reform, and commodification of the self that necessitates a chameleon belief in anything and everything by turns--against one another, with a wide-eyed pilgrim torn between them, all set against a boarding school backdrop and seasoned with the angst of Sapphic coming-of-age. But it doesn't work. This is a book that needed to slow down, get wordier, spend time building its characters and setting.

The thing about books that publishers claim to be The Secret History? No one writes like Donna Tartt but Donna Tartt. They write like they're working production in a factory, because capitalism turns culture into an assembly line. And The Secret History isn't going to roll off an assembly line.