Episode 9.6: ‘A Great and Terrible Beauty’ by Libba Bray
This historical fantasy is from the realms of classic YA and we’re both super excited to revisit this novel that we both read around 10 years ago for the podcast as from what we remember, it has definite dark academia fantasy vibes.
While this series is now out of print, ‘The Great and Terrible Beauty’ is still available in ebook, and it stands as a touchstone of YA.
It's 1895, and after the death of her mother, 16-year-old Gemma Doyle is shipped off from the life she knows in British India to Spence Academy, a proper boarding school in England.
Lonely, guilt-ridden, and prone to visions of the future that have an uncomfortable habit of coming true, Gemma's reception at Spence is a chilly one. To make things worse, she's being followed by a mysterious young Indian man who has been sent to watch her. But why? What is her destiny? And what will her entanglement with Spence's most powerful girls – and their foray into the spiritual world – lead to?
But how will it hold up to the tropes of dark academia and a reread a decade later?
In this episode we discuss:
Revisiting a classic YA novel fifteen years later
Sophie’s issues with historical fiction and the subjugation of women
An unexpected treatise on politics, reading, and how everything is political in the wake of the 2024 US Presidential Election
And a whole lot of tangents…
You can listen to it here:
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘A Great and Terrible Beauty’ by Libba Bray
‘Only Ever Yours’ by Louise O’Neill
‘Empireland’ by Sathnam Sanghera
‘The Centre’ by Aeysha Manazir Siddiqi
‘White Hot Kiss’ by Jennifer L Armentrout
‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Brontë
‘The Saddle Club’ by Bonnie Bryant
‘The Horse Whisperer’ by Nicholas Evans
‘The Four’ by Ellie Keel
‘The Beautiful and the Cursed’ by Page Morgan
‘Poison Study’ by Maria V Snyder
OTHER MEDIA AND POP CULTURE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
The YA Literature Convention
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