PublishedUltimo Press, July 2022 |
ISBN9781761150470 |
FormatSoftcover, 320 pages |
Dimensions19.8cm × 12.8cm |
Sex. Power. Consent. Whenever I say I was at university with Eve, people ask me what she was like, sceptical perhaps that she could have always been as whole and self-assured as she now appears. To which I say something like: 'People are infinitely complex.'
But I say it in such a way-so pregnant with misanthropy-that it's obvious I hate her. Michaela and Eve are two bright, bold women who befriend each other their first year at a residential college at university, where they live in adjacent rooms. They could not be more different; one assured and popular - the other uncertain and eager-to-please. But something happens one night in O-week - a drunken encounter, a foggy memory that will force them to confront the realities of consent and wrestle with the dynamics of power. Initially bonded by their wit and sharp eye for the colleges' mix of material wealth and moral poverty, Michaela and Eve soon discover how fragile friendship is, and how capable of betrayal they both are. Written with a strikingly contemporary voice that is both wickedly clever and incisive, issues of consent, class and institutional privilege, and feminism become provocations for enduring philosophical questions we face today. Praise for Love & Virtue'Diana Reid will be called the new Sally Rooney - you're certain of it by the end of page one. By the end of this real, raw and startling novel, you know Reid is the talent to whom every smart young novelist who follows her will be compared - or hope to be.' - Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss'Love & Virtue captures the near-erotic thrill of being a young woman, alone and adrift, who finds, in another young woman, an intellectual equal ... Like Elena and Lila in Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, a touchstone for Reid, their spark feels charged, given to exploding.' - Sydney Morning Herald'Love & Virtue is an accomplished novel - by turns funny and furious, and full of the plangent longing and confusion of early adulthood.' - The Saturday Paper
Adam finished his undergraduate in writing and publishing in 2021 and has been working at Boffins ever since! He especially likes to read queer fiction, sociology and biographies.
Eve and Michaela meet at university at a residential college in Sydney and become entangled in a web of complex social politics. Diana Reid depicts an authentic female relationship with themes of feminism and classism in a setting that feels all too familiar to Australian universities. A brilliant, strong debut from an up-and-coming author.
