A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN TIME, EVENING STANDARD and METRO When Tash, daughter of a Russian oligarch, is sent to an English boarding school, she is new to the strange rituals of the girls there. Theirs is a world of strict pecking orders, eating disorders and Instagram angst. While she spends her time with the other girls at the lake and the stables, a hand-picked few are invited to join the Headmaster at his house for extra lessons. Then her friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, and quickly the routines of her dorm-mates seem ...
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A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN TIME, EVENING STANDARD and METRO When Tash, daughter of a Russian oligarch, is sent to an English boarding school, she is new to the strange rituals of the girls there. Theirs is a world of strict pecking orders, eating disorders and Instagram angst. While she spends her time with the other girls at the lake and the stables, a hand-picked few are invited to join the Headmaster at his house for extra lessons. Then her friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, and quickly the routines of her dorm-mates seem darker and more alien than ever before. Oligarchy is the fierce new novel about power, privilege and peer pressure from the bestselling author of The End of Mr. Y.
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'The joy in eating went a long time ago, of course, but now there is not even joy in starving'.
Natasha is the daughter of a Russian Oligarch, sent to a boarding school in England. Her new group of friends are shallow, interested in anorexia, boys and fashion - how well can she fit in?
I've never read any of Scarlett Thomas' other work and from reading Oligarchy I'm not really sure I have been inspired to do so again. I found the entire thing to be so confusing - we are told the main character is Natasha but we skip narrative perspectives frequently and as all the characters are really similar it makes for an odd read. I had no idea what was going on for most of the story; the blurb had penned it as a kind of murder/thriller type genre but then when someone dies no-one seems to particularly care and the perpetrator is found out almost by accident. There was a weird folktale about a lake and a pearl which Thomas had tried to shoe-horn into the main story but I didn't really understand the connection.
There is a strong theme of eating disorders here as well which is actually quite triggering in places. The school seem to do nothing about it but the school in general isn't focussed on very heavily, we don't really learn anything about the building, lessons, teachers or other students outside this very shallow group of girls.
I didn't find the writing style very engaging although thankfully it is a short read. I found myself powering through it to try and get to the end and work out what was the point of the story. A few parts of the writing annoyed me - the continued misuse of the word 'fluorescence' was jarring and combined with the jumbled perspective changes and the continued jumps of time and location just made it feel like a mess. I also didn't really feel like I sympathised with any of the characters - they all just felt silly and shallow and boring.
Overall Oligarchy was certainly not for me - the writing style, characterisation and poor plotting made for a pointless read. Thank you to NetGalley & Canongate for a chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
