Book Review: ‘The Swallows’ by Lisa Lutz (gender wars and feminist stereotypes)

It’s the finale of season 3 of ‘The Dark Academicals’! I can’t quite believe it!

I think I can speak for both Sarah and I when I say it was a tough run this time around. We were fighting for time and we had some tricky books, and sadly ‘The Swallows’ was one of those books.

This one had a whole lot of potential for both of us, and the execution just missed.

GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS

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 at the school 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 the school’s secrets begin to trickle out, the skirmish turns into an all-out war, with deeply personal – and potentially fatal – consequences for everyone involved.

That summary has so much potential for overturning some of the consistent issues in dark academia novels: resistance to the ‘boys will be boys’ rhetoric, overturning a toxic secret society, and girls banding together to fight for themselves.

But it didn’t really deliver on that.

The portrayal of the girls fell into the classic bra-burning, shaved-head, violent and unreasonable feminists. There was non of the promised nuance. The same also applied to the boys that were members of the Ten, with the only exceptions being the ones we already knew about from the outset.

I think that a lot of the lack of depth came from the sheer volumes of POVs in the novel. We spend time with so many characters that it stopped me from really connecting with any of them - there just wasn’t enough time to fully get to know them, their motivations, history or the interpersonal connections under the surface of what we see.

It’s just lacking.

There was so much potential in ‘The Swallows’ and I was really disappointed to end Season 3 of the podcast on a bum note, but you should see the line-up for Season 4…

(The only way to access that news before the announcement in early 2023 is to sign up for ‘The Dark Academicals Book Club’ newsletter, or listen to the finale podcast episode!)

So is ‘The Swallows’ dark academia? Not for us.

If you love dark academia as much as we do then please consider subscribing to our podcast and signing up for our mailer where we have a little book club and host regular giveaways! We release new episodes and mailer instalments fortnightly.

Written by Sophie