Wow. Weird book, but a good one. It reminded me a lot of Dapne DuMaurier's "Rebecca." I picked it up because it also reminded me of my small Vermont college, and a creepy professor we had there who manipulated students.
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I love this book. I read it about a year and a half ago. I realized from this book how few books are written about the college experience - what it is like to live on campus and start a mini-civilization. Even with all the story and the plot hoopla, this book was very much a story about going away to college and how that affects the rest of your life.
(We are so meant to be friends, Elizabeth. )
I recommended it to my friend Molly (very proper), and I forgot to mention the plot twists. She's torn - she loved it, but I think she's still a little shell-shocked by the experience.
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I agree, Kat. It is about college life, which is often a time when friendships are not only made, but affect one's life forever.
The reason I picked it up in the first place was because it seemed so much like my college. It could have been written about it. Small, rural college. Lots of drinking. Little groups, but everyone knew each other, at least by sight. A professor who hand-picked his students for questionable reasons.
The professor at our college who was the creep was the Shakepeare prof. You had to take Shakespeare with him, and he was a blatant mysogenist. No woman ever got an A that I knew of. He would invite male students to party with him, to drink and discuss literature, and to, um, seduce them.
The frightening thing was how susceptible these students were, as they were in the novel, to the professor's attentions.
I think Henry and Julian were lovers, or that, at least, Henry was in love with Julian.
It was just so real to me, and as you said, because of the college life more than the mystery.
I knew a Bunny, a female Bunny. I knew so many out-of-control people, and I was often one of them.
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I kind of think part of Stephen King's "Hearts in Atlantis" is a really good representation of college. I am moved nearly to tears by the intensity of my emotions and the force with which I recall my college romances when reading that book. "Peace + Love=Information." It hits me right in the heart.
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