osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2021-07-18 08:20 am
osprey_archer) wrote2021-07-18 08:20 am
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Book Review: If We Were Villains
M. L. Rio’s If We Were Villains was described to me as “like The Secret History,” which is true: it’s a book about a tight-knit group of college students, Shakespearian actors in this case, who murder one of their friends. It’s also somewhat misleading: is anything REALLY like The Secret History? Surely this comparison is setting us all up for disappointment.
And it does lack The Secret History’s gleeful willingness to make its protagonists horrible people (charming as hell! But rotten at the core) who murder to protect themselves from the consequences of their own earlier vile actions. When the murder occurs in this book, it’s pretty much self-defense: the group is protecting itself from a member who has grown violently erratic and already caused some pretty serious physical harm.
The comparison also undersells the queer subtext of If We Were Villains, which culminates in our narrator Oliver (playing Edgar) kissing his best friend/roommate/obsession James (playing Edmund) on the mouth onstage at the end of King Lear as James stage-dies in Oliver’s arms, right after James (in real life) admits that he’s the one who left their mutual friend Richard for dead in the lake all those months ago. (The next morning the group found Richard, not quite dead yet, in the lake, and stood passively by as he died, on the theory that if he lived he was probably going to kill someone.)
Then Oliver and James walk offstage and Oliver confesses the murder to the cops, who are backstage waiting to arrest James. James begs Oliver to take back his fake confession, but does not do the only thing that would clear things up, which is confessing for real.
This is one of those moments where you see the authorial hand pushing: Rio has an ending planned, and this ending requires James not to confess. Instead, James commits suicide, or rather fakes his suicide, I think, but this is implied via a suicide note that consists of a quote from Shakespeare’s Pericles, so it’s not wildly clear... but Oliver thinks that this Pericles quote will lead him to James, especially when he discovers James' body was never found.
So romantic! Very extra! Extremely “but have you considered salving your suicidal guilt and saving Oliver from prison by confessing to the murder that you did in fact commit, James?” But that would blow up not only Rio’s ending but also the entire frame story (we start the book with Oliver in prison), so I can’t blame James too much when he had the entire weight of authorial convenience against him.
Anyway, the book clearly has some creaky plot problems, BUT I really enjoyed it. Highly recommend if you like murder college students, murder gays, or copious quotations from Shakespeare.
And it does lack The Secret History’s gleeful willingness to make its protagonists horrible people (charming as hell! But rotten at the core) who murder to protect themselves from the consequences of their own earlier vile actions. When the murder occurs in this book, it’s pretty much self-defense: the group is protecting itself from a member who has grown violently erratic and already caused some pretty serious physical harm.
The comparison also undersells the queer subtext of If We Were Villains, which culminates in our narrator Oliver (playing Edgar) kissing his best friend/roommate/obsession James (playing Edmund) on the mouth onstage at the end of King Lear as James stage-dies in Oliver’s arms, right after James (in real life) admits that he’s the one who left their mutual friend Richard for dead in the lake all those months ago. (The next morning the group found Richard, not quite dead yet, in the lake, and stood passively by as he died, on the theory that if he lived he was probably going to kill someone.)
Then Oliver and James walk offstage and Oliver confesses the murder to the cops, who are backstage waiting to arrest James. James begs Oliver to take back his fake confession, but does not do the only thing that would clear things up, which is confessing for real.
This is one of those moments where you see the authorial hand pushing: Rio has an ending planned, and this ending requires James not to confess. Instead, James commits suicide, or rather fakes his suicide, I think, but this is implied via a suicide note that consists of a quote from Shakespeare’s Pericles, so it’s not wildly clear... but Oliver thinks that this Pericles quote will lead him to James, especially when he discovers James' body was never found.
So romantic! Very extra! Extremely “but have you considered salving your suicidal guilt and saving Oliver from prison by confessing to the murder that you did in fact commit, James?” But that would blow up not only Rio’s ending but also the entire frame story (we start the book with Oliver in prison), so I can’t blame James too much when he had the entire weight of authorial convenience against him.
Anyway, the book clearly has some creaky plot problems, BUT I really enjoyed it. Highly recommend if you like murder college students, murder gays, or copious quotations from Shakespeare.
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Still loved the world's most emotionally complicated onstage kiss at the end, though, that truly was *chef's kiss*
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It's just a lot more black-and-white than TSH— they were acting in self-defense! the guy that died was, like, actually dangerous, as opposed to merely obnoxious!