Fiction – hardcover; Headline Review; 352 pages; 2007. Review copy courtesy of the author.
The last time I read a campus novel was probably Donna Tartt’s The Secret History way back in 1993. I’d forgotten about the closed world of the university campus, in which students seem perpetually at loggerheads with the academic staff. Once-upon-a-time that was my world too, but I escaped it by the seat of my pants, swapping the cash-strapped lifestyle of a post-graduate student for the cash-strapped lifestyle of the rookie reporter. A dozen years later and I’m an editor instead of an academic, but it could quite easily have been the other way around.
Reading Rosy Thornton’s latest book, Hearts and Minds, which is set in the all-female St Radegund’s College, Cambridge, was an unexpected reminder of my distant past. And in a funny, crazy, karmic-type of way, it seemed fitting to find that one of the main characters — James Rycarte — is a BBC executive who swaps journalism for academia.
I wasn’t sure what to make of this novel when I began reading it a fortnight ago. It seemed to take forever to set up the plot, which revolves around Rycarte, the college’s first ever male Head of House, quarrelling with the fellowship about a large cash donation that could be used for much-needed building repairs as well as setting up scholarships for up to 10 students in perpetuity. His one champion, the career-minded senior tutor, Martha Pearce, has her own battles to fight — a rent strike by students, coupled with domestic problems involving a clinically depressed teenage daughter and a layabout husband — to devote all her energies to Rycarte’s aims.
But once I got into the rhythm of the writing and came to know the diverse and quirky range of characters, I fell in love with the story, the setting and the little subplots. I decided, about 100 pages in, that this was a book to savour and so I treated myself to a few chapters a night rather than race through it and miss out on the subtleties of Thornton’s lovely rich writing style.
Despite the somewhat “girlie” cover, this is not chick-lit, nor, as the title may suggest, is it a cheesy romantic novel. In fact, I’d argue that this is mature fiction for mature readers, male and female alike. At its most basic level Hearts and Minds explores the complicated balancing acts that people perform every day — Rycarte, looking after the college’s best interests without compromising its integrity; Pearce, juggling her academic career with a troubled home life — but adds a delicious layer of extra interest by setting it in a cloistered world where tradition does not mix with modernity.
This is a great, rainy day novel brimming with intelligent, often witty, prose, the perfect kind of story to luxuriate in while the rest of the world goes about its busy ways. I very much enjoyed it.
Reading Matters 
Many people think working in a university is idyllic, but I am finding out from professor friends, that it can be a viper’s den.
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Isabel, this book is full of back-stabbing women of both the student and staff variety!
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I just love campus novels and haven’t read a new one in ages. Thanks so much for this great review, Kimbofo. I’ll be looking out for this one for sure.
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The author also kindly sent me a copy of this and I am ashamed to say it is still lurking in my to-read pile. Rosy, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry! You’re right of course about the offputtingness of the cover, and the price of £20 is alarmingly steep. Good to hear it’s worth a read though!
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Enclosed worlds so often make great fiction, and I think Hearts & Minds captures it so well.
I think appeal of the campus novel is that the reader (usually with a newbie main character as their representative) is trying to work out how the world works, and then make the most of it, or at least survive it. This is so like our experience of growing up and becoming adults. The children’s equivalent of the campus novel is the school novel, whether it’s Charlotte Sometimes, Malory Towers, or Harry Potter: a new world full of arcane rules within which you must survive and grow.
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Emma, yes, exactly. It’s also the claustrophobia of ‘enclosed worlds’ that makes these kinds of novels work.
PS> I have the Mathematics of Love in my TBR pile! 😉
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Yes, closed worlds. Over on Tales from the Reading Room I found myself ruminating that the campus novel is the literati’s equivalent of the hospital romance, which is another enclosed world which involves professional and personal lives overlapping, viperously or otherwise, and where you have to know the rules…
Kimbofo, I do hope you enjoy TMOL, if you ever get there: if your TBR pile is anything like mine it gets ever higher and dustier. I know I keep reading, so why doesn’t it ever get smaller? 😉
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Emma, the hospital romance is the perfect comparison. I’m not sure I’ve read one since my teens though! 😉
As for the TBR pile, it has come to the point where I now have more unread books than read books in my collection. In fact, it’s not actually a pile, but an entire set of bookshelves!
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I just got a copy of this last night–so glad to hear good things about it!
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Fabulous to see your name pop up when I googled a review for this book. A trusted reviewer! I’ve added the book to my TBR list.
She has a great blog post up about her girly covers: http://literarywomen.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/rosy-thornton/
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Hi Nathalie, nice to hear from you (I must add your blog to my RSS reader!). Thanks for the link to Rosy’s post. I’m sure it must be incredibly frustrating to have your novels marketed in such a way. It’s so restrictive and narrow-minded. This is the kind of book that men would enjoy just as much as women.
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