Written by Tom Carrao
This university-set thriller certainly earns its “woke” credentials, plunging the reader headlong into a pounding, fetid environment lorded over by a cult of toxic masculinity, which gives rise to a furious foment of #MeToo generational outrage. A long-standing hierarchical power dynamic, personified in a nasty, secretive online forum dubbed the Darkroom in which the male student body callously ranks female value in regards to their skill in delivering sexual services, is coaxed out into the open—exposed and opposed.
It takes an outsider to set the wheels in motion. New teacher Ms. Witt, herself arriving at the campus trailing an air of controversy and agitation, is quick to engage with a drifting but sharp sense of unease and trepidation in both students and teachers, sensing a seething atmosphere of something greatly alarming wilfully ignored and left to rot. A simple assignment meant to help her identify individuals—what do you love? what do you hate? who are you?—inadvertently reveals troubling insights into both personal and public histories, becoming a catalyst for the conflagration to come. Her interactions with fellow teachers and members of staff are a succession of brusque conversations, furtive encounters, wayward desires, and stunning obliviousness (the adults are not spared from certain degrees of immaturity or pettiness).
Although slightly intimidated by the bullying tactics of the school’s elite—especially the group known as “the Ten”, the absolute rulers of the hallways and classrooms—she remains cool in the exterior, a means by which to deflect their power. As she will come to learn, as others have with great difficulty and humiliation, sometimes it’s best not to cross this group. Threatening notes and discomfiting video surveillance are just two salvos in a campaign of menace. Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies are clear antecedents.
The assignment turns out, along with Ms. Witt’s perceived support, to be the ember that will ignite the spirit of revolution in those who feel entirely powerless and sidelined, including some people close to the orbit of the Ten who have information and abilities that can be used to compromise their foundation. Allies are gathered, strategies are negotiated, and war is prepared. Ms. Witt’s efforts in engaging administrators is met with dismissal, disapproval, warnings, and more than a little fear. A “boys will be boys” attitude is evoked, a refusal to investigate allegations more than superficially—a reader can’t help but imagine Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Larry Nasser, Jimmy Savile (in the U.K.), and a litany of countless names of abusers globally across college campuses, boardrooms, and parishes, a repetition of shameful cover-ups and disregard.
Given there are a multitude of characters, some come into focus much more acutely than others. Readers will be grateful for author Lutz’s quick key of “the Ten” members, as you will no doubt have to reference it often for recollection’s sake. Males for the most part do not fare well, lecherous at heart, ruled by uncharitable libidos. Norman Crowley, exploited by “the editors” (as the Darkroom chairmen refer to themselves) for his IT expertise, decent but stained by association and lack of initiative and “Tenner” Jonah, kind and respectful but helplessly ensnared in the firm grip of legacy—his brother having been the original designer of the website—are the two male characters of any redeeming quality. Gemma Russo, an orphan and guardian of the school’s headmaster, inexplicably accepted into the Ten’s fold, is the figurehead of insurrection, transforming into a warrior—she and her army make bold physical statements as the plans escalate towards their denouement. Ms. Witt, with her problematic backstory, fraught relations with her parents and impulsive behaviours, is a complicated but very relatable, failures and all, guide through the maelstrom.
Brilliantly paced for a 500-page + saga, there really are no lulls. The book inexorably builds from Ms. Witt’s arrival as an innocent onwards to knowledge of a darkness present but buried and ultimately to a slow tease out of the corruption that undergirds the school and its eventual reckoning, told mostly from the shifting vantage of three key players. The climax, messy and brutal, exists in another world entirely, an awful acceptance that sometimes change can only be possible through force (“you can keep telling girls to be polite, and it’ll all work out in the end…but don’t be surprised when they figure out that you’ve been feeding them lies…don’t be alarmed when they grow tired of playing by your rules…and don’t be shocked when they decide that if they can’t win a fair fight then they’ll just have to fight dirty”).
Loss and tragedy are the result of one extreme met with another extreme, itself the result of years of pent-up fury at the other’s escape of consequence and justice. The saving grace is that the perpetrator has a conscience about her actions. Lutz leaves the reader with a lot of tough, thorny questions about impasses between the sexes, about abilities to ever fully comprehend the other, and of systematic miscarriages. It is a sad but necessary call to arms, its voice loud and declarative.
The Swallows is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
From the author of The Passenger—hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “a dead-serious thriller (with a funny bone)”—and the bestselling Spellman Files series comes a suspenseful novel about a new teacher at a not-so-elite boarding school who accidentally incites a gender war among the students and staff.
When Alexandra Witt arrives at Stonebridge Academy and insists on moving into a ramshackle cottage in the woods, curiosity among the student body and the staff skyrockets. Who is this young teacher who came here alone, dresses like the kids, and left her last school under a cloud of speculation?
With its picturesque campus and classic uniforms, Stonebridge might look the part, but as Alex soon learns, it’s anything but old school. When she advises one of her new students to stand up for herself, the girl takes her advice a little too much to heart. Long-simmering tensions between the boys and girls boil over into a fight. And then total war.
By the time Gemma, Alex’s favorite student, starts uncovering Stonebridge’s darkest secrets with the help of some unlikely allies, Alex’s bumpy start has become a nightmare. Cast into a role she never wanted, she watches the spark she ignited consume everything around her. And the only way out might carry an even higher cost.
Told by four narrators, none of whom inspires total confidence, The Swallows unfolds with brilliant timing, puzzle-like plotting, and riveting storytelling that will shock and delight readers everywhere.
