The Swallows by Lisa Lutz
I would like to thank Sarah from Titan for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Titan
Published – Out Now
Price - £8.99 paperback £4.68 Kindle eBook
Content warning – This thriller deals with sexual abuse. It does not glamorise it; nor condone it but some readers may find the content uncomfortable reading
What do you love? What do you hate? What do you want?
It starts with this simple writing prompt from Alex Witt to her students at Stonebridge Academy. When their answers raise disturbing questions of their own, Ms Witt knows there’s more going on than anyone will admit. She finds the few girls who’ve started to question the school’s boys will be boys’ attitude and incites a resistance that quickly becomes a movement. As secrets begin to trickle out, the skirmish turns into an all-out war, with deeply personal – and potentially fatal – consequences for everyone involved.
While I love education, I find schools a less comfortable location - its where we start to see society being stratified between the cool and the uncool; the nerds and the jocks; the predators and the prey. Schools are where we learn that people as individuals may be ok but groups of them can be dangerous. This is where ‘boys will be boys’ when actually that just means toxic masculinity can asserting itself. As we have seen over the last decade appalling behaviour can often be very deliberately overlooked if the ‘right’ sort of person is the culprit, they may be ‘forgiven’ while the impacts of the abuse will for many years later still haunt the victims. In Lisa Lutz’s stunningly dark thriller The Swallows we tour an elite school which is revealed to be hiding many dark secrets that when finally exposed will leave no one unaffected.
Stonebridge Academy while not a centre of academic excellence is very much a school where many children of the rich and famous will go. It loves the written word though with its Tolkien Library; Dickens House and even a Woolf Hall. The school has its leading group known as the Ten the boys and girls in their senior year who are the coolest of the cool organising parties after classes; drinking illegal alcohol and on the surface the usual swirls of relationships and groups. Into this walks Alex Witt who has been offered a new teaching role and a fresh start. Gemma Russo is a rare exception to the school’s usual type of student and also a member of the Ten; but she is one with her own agenda. Norman Crowley is a student serving the needs of the more popular kids in the Ten; but he knows he’s on the wrong side. With Miss Witt’s arrival the balance slightly shifts, and these characters start to cross paths and in doing so this attracts the attention of people keen for their secrets to stay hidden by whatever means necessary.
This is a fascinating novel and Lutz uses the format of the main characters talking about how events proceeded, and we are warned at the start peoples’ lives are going to be in danger just to immediately out us on guard. Every main character is hiding something from themselves and to be honest to their own self too. What really impressed me is how each character comes across different – Alex is a switched on alert teacher who likes to get to know her students but she is not one of those motivational speakers the movies love to portray she is just intrigued by the unexpected answers to her personality quiz at the start of term. Gemma is angry but quite in a diffuse way and Stonebridge finally provides a situation for her to attack and Normal is tortured between what is expected of him and what he wants to do – few of these options may be safe. We get under the skin of the characters realise they all have secrets and slowly as their lives cross, they get exposed and then we see how people react to them. It’s a very immersive story and sucks you in with lots of reveals and counterattacks being thrown around.
The key mystery though is revealed to be The Darkroom. Most of the girls fear it and many of the boys praise it. Alex picks up on this while Gemma has decided after the latest girl being publicly shamed with naked pictures being sent across social media has decided its time to stop it. This is a story about how boys/men feel that girls are not human but something for them to use and abuse. This isn’t done comfortably – we see many nice pupils being emotionally manipulated into thinking someone cares for them and yet we then see what the boys say when their girlfriend is not around. Its sobering and powerful material and worst of all we see it has had consequences for years. Alex finds some teachers turned a blind eye for the sake of the school; others see this as just a steppingstone to manhood and there is a very sleazy character who we occasionally see as the outcome of such growing up. Through Alex’s life prior to the school and the encounters with the adults she meets we see the behaviour of the students doesn’t stop when people grow up and that is so startling. Lutz takes us on a journey to discover why this school in on edge; what is the Darkroom and then in the thrilling last half of the book the war between teenagers as a group of girls finally declare on it and its owners.
It is certainly empowering there is a brilliant scene when some boys suddenly see the girls they exploit not as objects but people that are angry and slightly terrifying, but it doesn’t sugar that rebellion against such an entity as toxic masculinity means a happy Hollywood ending for everyone. Wars have causalities on all sides and sometimes even for non-combatants who just wanted to help people. This means you don’t feel until the very end that anyone is safe and that makes this a very tense and engrossing read.
This is very much despite its 2010 setting a book about now and how we are finding out how abuse is often known about yet left unpunished, that perpetrators get away with it for many years just to save the reputations of the entities everyone serves where privilege protects privilege. Its got some great messages on consent; learning not to give into toxic masculinity and not giving in when people tell you to stop. One of the best thrillers out this year and highly recommended I shall be watching out for more from Lutz in the future.
