Any female author that is young and feisty in her choice of subject matter inevitably ends up being compared to Sally Rooney. Similar to Normal People, Love and Virtue is a campus novel. There the comparisons end. Reid is admittedly an avowed fan of the campus genre, citing its lineage and influence from Brideshead Revisited to The Secret History. Have no doubt, Love and Virtue is powerful, a call to challenge the invasive rape culture persistent in many Australian (and elsewhere) universities. Reid asks whether if you have mutually drunken sex, you should call this out as rape. The somewhat naive narrator chooses not to, but her ostensible best friend appropriates the event as her own, becoming a cause célèbre. This opens up – and the novel is perfect for reading groups – questions of ownership, identity, guilt, friendship, victimhood, manipulation and more. Love and Virtue represents an undoubted coming of age for the narrator. Reid, however, tries to pack in too much: an unnecessary and cliched affair with an old professor, a diversion into the philosophies of love and virtue, etc. The author has potential, but this novel is not quite the finished article. 8/10.
By Diana Reid