Depiction of privilege close to home

Of Australia’s 12 most recent prime ministers, one-quarter attended a private residential college at the University of Sydney. These colleges have become notorious.

Diana Reid's impressive debut is one of a series of fresh offerings by Ultimo Press.

Of Australia’s 12 most recent prime ministers, one-quarter attended a private residential college at the University of Sydney. These colleges have become notorious, with relentless allegations that they foster classist, racist and misogynistic cultures among residents.

For an insider’s perspective into what life can be like for those who take up residence at the lauded institutions, look no further than Diana Reid’s debut novel, Love & Virtue.

This book follows 18-year-old Michaela Burns, who attends an all-women’s residential college at the University of Sydney (presumably based on The Women’s College, although the name of the institution is changed) on scholarship from Canberra.

 Reid explores Michaela’s existence on the periphery of the extreme privileges of Sydney’s elites, focusing on three primary relationships: with the charismatic but righteous female friend who commits a betrayal, the 36-year-old professor notorious for having sex with his teenage students, and the fellow college resident who has sex with Michaela when she is too drunk to remember him the next day.

 Although Love & Virtueis fiction, its backdrop is familiar. Reid references true events, including the 1977 attack of an 18-year-old-woman on the oval of St Paul’s – renamed St Thomas’ – College and, more recently, the 2019 anti-residential college protests incited after relentless allegations of a sexually violent culture at the University of Sydney.

 Just as I thought that the “un-novel” – that contemporary impossible-to-put-down-but-nothing-really-happens genre popularised by Sally Rooney – was the literary piñata that had been hit so many times nothing else tasty could fall out, Love & Virtueproved me wrong. Set close to home, Reid’s descriptions of central Sydney are exquisite. Sydneysiders may relish in their comforting familiarity, while others can enjoy the evocative prose. Readers are propelled through the pages by easy reading, languid descriptions and relatable characters.

 And it’s funny! The level of detail is so on-point it verges on absurd, including a description of one particular tradition in which Sydney’s private school boys pull their pants down to peacock one another at clubs and parties when Eagle Rock by Daddy Cool plays (yes, that’s a real thing).

Love and Virtue.

As a fellow private school student who ended up at the University of Sydney, I felt at times that I had personally lived these moments, all while taking a serious look at my own privilege.  That being said, I am unsure whether the text would be so gripping for someone who is less familiar with the University of Sydney and its many privileged subgroups. Although Reid aims to answer universal philosophical questions – “Are you a good person, or do you just look like one?” the back cover asks – it was my familiarity with privilege and its bizarre social rituals that helped Love & Virtue to stand out. I am interested to hear whether Reid’s depiction of the University embodies the idea of privilege more broadly.

 For a book that kept me up overnight reading, I was disappointed to find that I did not believe the ending. The most villainised character, by far, was Eve, Michaela’s toxic female friend. In one flashforward, Michaela vividly imagines Eve being hit by a bus, and smiles. While Eve’s actions throughout the novel are dubious at best, her fellow characters receive a generous dose of mercy – including the ethically challenged university professor, and the peer who has drunken sex with Michaela. While these reactions may have made sense individually, they seemed incongruous and rushed when placed side-by-side.

 In the final two pages, Reid self-reflexively addresses this quandary. “What does it say about me,” Michaela asks of her friend Balthazar, “that the person I cannot forgive, whose success I most resent, is another woman?”

“Women are people, too, Michaela,” Balthazar responds. “And some people are cows.” While this statement is true, the exchange makes it difficult to explore the novel’s ending without feeling that one’s criticism has already been dismissed.

The answer that I would give to Michaela’s question is quite different: her feelings about Eve say very little about Michaela as an individual, but say a lot about a cultural context that reserves forgiveness for certain kinds of people.

 Reid insists from the beginning of the novel that she is looking for questions, not answers. This is Love & Virtue’s greatest strength.

The story is entertaining, but it is also valuable both for the questions it poses and the startlingly accurate portrait it paints of some of Australia’s most privileged institutions.

Whatever my qualms with the ending, Love & Virtue is a delight.

Chloe Whelan is a Sydney-based journalist.

Love & Virtue

By Diana Reid
Ultimo, Fiction debut

320pp, $35