As much as I love Montreal summers for their longer days, warmer weather, and seemingly endless stream of festivals, I spent most of my June and July longing for the fall months to come. This summer, to balance out the endless monotony of an office job, I took on a personal project—reading my way through the great campus novels. As one would expect, campus novels take place on a university or college campus; they’re typically set in the fall, often involve secret societies or some grand mystery, and can always be counted on to deliver drama at the highest level. So, to help you get in the autumnal mood, here are my top three recommendations for campus novels to read this fall.
‘The Art of Fielding’ by Chad Harbach
As the baseball season comes to a close, The Art of Fielding makes the perfect early-fall read for sports fans and gossipy liberal arts colleges alike. The book follows Henry, a prodigious shortstop for the Westish Harpooners, a fictional Midwestern college team. Henry is a star—his entire team expects him to go pro, but just as his career seems to be taking off, he messes up a routine throw. The disastrous fallout irrevocably changes the lives of five people on campus.
Through switching character perspectives each chapter, author Chad Harbach masterfully balances ‘inside-baseball’ jargon with a gripping college narrative. Addressing a range of topics from performance anxiety and addiction to the melodrama of varsity athletics, The Art of Fielding is a thrilling read, regardless of your affinity for baseball.
‘The Idiot’ by Elif Batuman
Author Elif Batuman’s debut novel, The Idiot, tells the story of Harvard freshman Selin as she embarks on a journey of self-invention. As she goes about her first year, she, on a whim, signs up for a beginner Russian class and meets Ivan, a charming mathematics graduate student from Hungary. Despite limited conversation, they start an increasingly cryptic email exchange, with Ivan using, nearly exclusively, metaphors from their readings. Her growing infatuation and desire to spend the summer abroad drive her to teach English in the Hungarian countryside, hoping to understand Ivan and his background better.
The Idiot unfolds over the course of an academic year, with the first two-thirds following Selin through her fall and winter semesters and the final section focusing on her summer. By grounding much of the novel on Harvard’s campus, the book vividly captures the bitter awkwardness of being a freshman and the rapid changes experienced from month to month. Batuman’s writing immerses readers in Selin’s discomfort, rarely diverting to side plots; she compels us to confront Selin’s anxiety, thrills, and heartbreak directly. The journey of her growth and the ultimately unfinished nature of her personality make this novel a compelling read.
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt
As the most widely-read book on this list, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History// has cemented itself as an autumnal classic, with an experience that’s only heightened by being read on a university campus. The story is set (unsurprisingly) at a small, elite liberal arts college in Vermont and tracks an insular group of six Classics students under the influence of the menacingly charismatic Professor Julian Morrow. As his hedonistic lectures turn the group’s morality askew, they end up murdering one of their own. Now don’t worry, this isn’t really a spoiler—the story starts with confessional narration from protagonist Richard just days after the murder before flashing back to the beginning of his time at college to explain just how he might have become complicit in the death of another student.
Starting as a fairly standard murder (without the) mystery, throughout its nearly 600 pages, the novel descends into utter stomach-churning madness, never truly satisfyingly resolving anything yet leaving the reader wanting more. Its dark fascination with academia combined with the setting of a Vermont fall and winter makes this the perfect book to accompany your first semester.
