Lisa Harding chats dark academia, The Wildelings
Lisa Harding chats her character-driven dark academia, The Wildelings, and why we don't need to "like" her characters.
By now you must have seen hundreds and thousands of dark academia books roundups all over the internet, but they mostly contain dark academia titles that are also thrillers, or with magical realism. Lisa Harding’ The Wildelings is special in that it’s a character-driven literary fiction.
The story follows two friends, Jessica and Linda, who have been best friends since the first day of school as they enter Wilde – an elite university in the heart of Dublin, far away from their troubled childhoods. Jessica thrives immediately, and, with the faithful Linda at her side, finds herself at the heart of a new circle of friends. Until Mark enters the picture and asserts an influence on the whole friend group – culminating in a terrible tragedy that strikes at the end of their first year.
To celebrate the release of The Wildelings, we have invited Lisa Harding to chat all things dark academia.
Why do you think dark academia books are so appealing to readers throughout the years?
I guess it’s the rarefied settings in cobble-stoned, gothic, insanely beautiful campuses peopled by crazy young things! These are insular worlds ruled by new ideas, friendships, first loves, hormones, drugs, sex, heady experimentation, boundary-pushing, expansion, freedom, youth, abandon. What’s not to love?
Most dark academia titles are also thrillers, or with magical realism. Why do you think The Wildelings works so well as a dark academia that is mainly character-driven?
I’m glad you think it does work well on that level. It’s more character-driven because that’s where my interest lies as a writer. It’s less about the plot and more about interiority and narrative voice. I am more interested in the ‘why’ than the ‘what’. I was primarily interested in the psychological workings of young, damaged, reckless students who are trying to break free of their dysfunctional pasts only to fall further into a dark, twisted almost cult-like group.
Tell us what it is like writing characters that are flawed. Do you root for them, or do you dislike them too?
Apparently, I have a gift for writing deeply flawed, ‘unlikeable’ characters – which is fine by me! I don’t read to find a new best friend. I want to be consistently surprised and wrong-footed. So, when I write I do so with no filter. I allow all the dark, ugly parts of myself that I keep well hidden in my ‘normal’ life to spill out on the page. If I’m unsettled or appalled by my characters as I write, I reckon I’m on to a good thing! I don’t have to ‘like’ them; I need to be fascinated and thrilled by them.
We see Jessica as a student and as a 40-year-old, with the latter’s scenes written as therapy sessions. Why did you choose to do so?
Because she felt relentless as an unfiltered, raw, out-of-control, impulsive, self-seeking young thing. I felt she needed some distance and perspective at times.
And how do you make sure the questions that Jessica’s therapist asks would be “the right questions” to ask?
The therapist is there as a framing device. To help adult Jessica dig deep into her younger self’s capacity for cruelty and recklessness. She asks the questions the narrative demands.
Speaking of choices, the book mentions books and plays such as The Stranger, Six Characters in Search of an Author. What’s the thought process behind picking which ones to name drop in The Widelings?
That was purely instinctive, drawing on my memory as a young French student and actress in Trinity College’s drama society. Just things that stayed with me, I guess…And their theatrical and alienated sensibilities fit with the novel’s style.
Finally, Wilde College – is that an actual college in Dublin?
It’s a thinly veiled version of Trinity College. I wanted the world to be a heightened new experience for the reader and to give myself absolute artistic freedom.
The Wildelings by Lisa Harding is published by Bloomsbury on 24th April.
