ML Rio’s first novel, published last year, has been compared to Donna Tartt’s debut, A Secret History. Not a good omen as I didn’t think Secret History cut the mustard.
The comparison arises because both novels are about university students living in the hothouse of college life. The McGuffin in If We Were Villains is that there are just seven fourth year actors studying Shakespeare in an eccentric university of the Arts in Illinois, the fictional Dellecher Classical Conservatory. If it was just a novel about the relationships between the seven, six after a murder, it wouldn’t be worth a fig; more like a modern Agatha Christie than something I’d want to draw to your attention.
Where IWWV scores a bullseye is in the intertwining of the plot with the Shakespeare plays they are putting on. The students are so immersed in Shakespeare they talk to each other in quotes and the action reflects the plays. It is a satisfying read if you enjoy Shakespeare and ML Rio’s masterstroke is to extract such a profusion of apt quotations.
If I may digress, we put on The Marowitz Collage of Hamlet as a House play. I remember finding it incomprehensible but mercifully shorter than the real thing. It was all very up to date – the play had been written two years earlier and the theatre opened about the same time. Attending a performance was akin to getting a day release from prison.
I was sure IWWV was a Shakespeare quote but I don’t think it is. Clever MLR makes up some Shakespeare herself. She is qualified – she did an MA in Shakespeare Studies at King’s College, London. Here’s one of her juiciest:
“What is more important, that Caesar is assassinated or that he is assassinated by his intimate friends? … That,’ Frederick said, ‘is where the tragedy is.”