See the hottest books publishing this Summer

BookBrowse Reviews The Truants by Kate Weinberg

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Truants by Kate Weinberg

The Truants

by Kate Weinberg
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (6):
  • First Published:
  • Jan 28, 2020, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Jan 2021, 304 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Reviews

BookBrowse:


A frightening vision of worshipful desire, The Truants explores the dangers of seeking one's self in others.
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For access to our digital magazine, free books,and other benefits, become a member today.

The Truants opens with Jess Walker, a first-year university student in Norfolk, England, experiencing a bout of bad luck. A nasty stomach flu has limited her ability to socialize during the first week of school, and she's been unexpectedly bumped from a course taught by her idol, the unconventional and charismatic literary critic Lorna Clay. In addition, Jess's newfound friendship with a wealthy and socially adept girl, Georgie, serves to remind her of her own relatively invisible existence as a middle child from an unremarkable family.

Soon, though, Jess's luck seems to change. It turns out she's been moved into another of Lorna's courses, one on Agatha Christie that Georgie is also taking. Meanwhile, Georgie begins dating Alec, a South African journalist on a fellowship, and Jess starts seeing a geology major named Nick. The two couples form a habit of spending time together.

This arrangement is quickly complicated by the fact that Jess is secretly attracted to Alec, and has potentially compromising information about him that could harm his relationship with Georgie. Lorna, who lives with another professor named Hugh Steadman, soon gets caught up in Jess and Georgie's social circle, and appears to have her own mysterious connection with Alec. Jess looks to Lorna for support as she wrestles with her desire for Alec and her guilty feelings toward Nick and Georgie, and discovers that her relationship predicaments seem intertwined with Lorna's teachings about the life and stories of Agatha Christie. Before long, Jess finds herself involved in no fewer than two love triangles, and a stinging betrayal sends the plot tumbling into whodunnit territory.

But unlike a Christie story, Weinberg's novel is less about actually solving the mystery and more about the struggle to find meaning in the silence following fast-burning infatuation. Jess sums up this phenomenon in the prologue, where she reflects from some point in the future on the events of the book about to unfold for the reader:

Back there, back then—a place I want to be, dancing along a line of heady, taboo possibilities. Rather than here, now, sitting amidst the rubble and debris of the whole awful thing.

Jess's first-person narration, which is, for the most part, an engrossing blend of straightforward, humorous and dramatic, reveals someone who has trouble understanding her own needs and intentions. This is apparent in how she thinks of her relationship with Lorna. At times, it seems Jess craves maternal attention from Lorna to make up for the lack of affection she receives from her own mother. At other times, she entertains the possibility that Lorna might be sexually interested in her. But attention and interest themselves, or perhaps the thrill of seeking them out, seem to be what she desires above all else. And even with some distance between herself and the "whole awful thing," she can't think of anything better than to go back to the beginning and chase those desires all over again. This seems even more sobering after we find out how relatively dull Lorna and Alec are—Lorna's "literary criticism" sounds like pretentious drivel, and Alec's attempts to paint himself as a human rights crusader come off as unconvincing and self-serving. Why Jess continues to be attracted to their void-like qualities even years later is, in a sense, the real mystery.

This isn't to say that it's hard to sympathize with Jess, or that it isn't clear that Alec and Lorna were older adults who had the power and resources to manipulate her, only that the novel relies heavily on Jess's self-exploration to fill out the story. Her reckoning with the past is a valid and worthwhile focus. However, she does more "sitting amidst the rubble and debris" than actually sorting through it, and so never quite breaks through to an honest and satisfying conclusion.

Still, Weinberg paints a fascinating, uncynical picture of the kind of intense, self-destructive attractions that people may be especially prone to in late adolescence but that could crop up at any time. The Truants is a reminder that these feelings, while potentially dangerous, aren't necessarily false, and that they may be worth trying to make peace with in the end.

Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in February 2020, and has been updated for the February 2021 edition. Click here to go to this issue.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked The Truants, try these:

We have 9 read-alikes for The Truants, but non-members are limited to two results. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Lamplighter's Bookshop
    by Sophie Austin
    The Lost Bookshop meets The Lost Apothecary in a beguiling novel full of secrets…
  • Book Jacket
    The Busybody Book Club
    by Freya Sampson
    They can't even agree on what to read, so how are they going to solve a murder?
  • Book Jacket
    The Ghostwriter
    by Julie Clark
    From the instant New York Times bestselling author of The Last Flight and The Lies I Tell comes a dazzling new thriller.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Making Friends Can Be Murder
    by Kathleen West

    Thirty-year-old Sarah Jones is drawn into a neighborhood murder mystery after befriending a deceptive con artist.

  • Book Jacket

    Ordinary Love
    by Marie Rutkoski

    A riveting story of class, ambition, and bisexuality—one woman risks everything for a second chance at first love.

Who Said...

You can lead a man to Congress, but you can't make him think.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

B a L

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.