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School
This is a campus novel where things go wrong. There are a few layout decisions that read better in the physical than the ebook. Half of the profits will go to organizations working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated trans people.
- GenresFiction
274 pages, Paperback
Published September 7, 2023
8 people are currently reading
204 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
January 4, 2024
anyone who says the campus novel is dead needs to read this brilliant and ambitious book!!! also all the people who didn’t say that need to read it too!!!
it’s delicious, it’s postmodern, it’s heady, it’s sprawling, there are no answers, there are all the answers, it’s a debut of debuts, but it is also just about being in college!!!!
it’s delicious, it’s postmodern, it’s heady, it’s sprawling, there are no answers, there are all the answers, it’s a debut of debuts, but it is also just about being in college!!!!
December 7, 2025
As a University-trained crab biologist, I recommend this book
August 4, 2024
This book reminded me vaguely of Future Feeling by Joss Lake. There’s a certain sort of grounded surrealism to it. Lake’s book deploys this in service of a narrative about trans envy, while School takes aim at a certain breed of campus radicalism. I liked School a lot! There were a lot of chapters I could not put down, especially towards the end. Will probably have to chew on it some more to develop thoughts about that surrealism and the narrative, but I look forward to the chewing.
January 13, 2026
the last third or so is incredible — ambitious and reframes the earlier stuff I found only decent pretty well. idk if i’m just too pynchon-brained as of late but i saw a lot of that in here, form-wise, humour-wise, voice-wise. a really great debut i’m going to read her next book for sure.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2023
“A new world’s on the way. And like any new world, this one’s not arriving from without—dropped off at their doorstep, neatly wrapped and ready to go—but rather, from within: University’s about to molt. Finals loom. Summer follows. Whatever surprises are left in store for the year, they’ll have to happen soon.”
“Life affirming” may not be the first thing that comes to mind regarding a novel that begins with self-immolation. But no novel I’ve read recently has opened up the potentiality in my mind of a new world, of a new lease on life, quite like School. Reading this is a molting; a rediscovery of the fundamental power of vibes, of connections, of empathy as the energy derived from splitting the LittlestAtom that makes any change, any chance of renewal possible.
This is a complex, difficult book. 12 different sections, none of them sharing a protagonist, one of them a straight-up essay on the formal analysis of memes, another an 80-page stream-of-consciousness drug trip. The climax is a suicide-note-cum-manifesto about a teenager’s descent into the dark web. Each chapter leaves dozens of loose ends and all of them get tied up by a crab. This book is big in its ambition, and it’s messy, and it’s glorious in its success at just scratching, scratching, clawing at the possibility of a chance of a fraction of truth and beauty.
Freed is clearly a well-read writer, and a literary nerd at that. Her style recalls Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Borges, Helen DeWitt, Paul Auster—a bygone (or molted?) era when authors built wings out of paper and ink to lift themselves up and transcend the form. Explicit references are made to Marx (many), Bakhtin, Lenin, Adorno, Lorde, Levine, Horkheimer, Jameson. This is a book for book nerds—it feels like a tasty treat confected especially for me to match my DNA. But that hasn’t stopped me from recommending it to almost everyone I meet.
This is a book that doesn’t shy away from getting at the heart of things: of capitalism, of revolution, the heart of gender, of doubt, of trust, of friendship. At the heart of the campus, a soul goes up in flames—it’s such a ripe image to begin the story. There are so many intense, thoughtful moments here, that transport me to a place of deep empathy, and “alex”’s dispatch from the void is one of them.
Freed has been to dark places, and brought back the light—light, in the sense that these moments shine light on the world in all its ugliness. The dark can be comforting; light can be harsh. But what else can we know to be true?
Anyway, if I’m not talking much about the plot it’s because this book inspires me to think in very lofty, high-minded ways. And it’s just so impossible to describe (succinctly). No wonder the back cover simply reads, “This is a campus novel where things go wrong. Half of the profits will go to organizations working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated trans people.” It’s a labyrinth, it’s a maze, it’s a bold work of fiction that will undoubtedly be on my mind for years and decades to come.
On a different note, I’m not sure any other novel has quite captured the pulse of the strange “techno-dreamland” haze that drooped over Stanford in the mid-to-late 2010s. In the wake of Elizabeth Holmes’ rise and fall, festering in the putridity of Brock Turner, blockchain, venture capitalists, cougar nights, the student body was always restless for something more substantial. More visible, real, less “disruptive” in the sense of concealing labor with an app. Sure, that power-hungry, machinistic segment of the student body existed, but it was never as simple as “insensitive tech geek: bad.” People like Freed were there too (am I giving anything away by saying she went to Stanford?).
“Molting” is an apt metaphor for this book to use, a new world emerging from the carcass of the old. Everyone’s a critic; and only if everyone remains a critic can things start to improve.
“Life affirming” may not be the first thing that comes to mind regarding a novel that begins with self-immolation. But no novel I’ve read recently has opened up the potentiality in my mind of a new world, of a new lease on life, quite like School. Reading this is a molting; a rediscovery of the fundamental power of vibes, of connections, of empathy as the energy derived from splitting the LittlestAtom that makes any change, any chance of renewal possible.
This is a complex, difficult book. 12 different sections, none of them sharing a protagonist, one of them a straight-up essay on the formal analysis of memes, another an 80-page stream-of-consciousness drug trip. The climax is a suicide-note-cum-manifesto about a teenager’s descent into the dark web. Each chapter leaves dozens of loose ends and all of them get tied up by a crab. This book is big in its ambition, and it’s messy, and it’s glorious in its success at just scratching, scratching, clawing at the possibility of a chance of a fraction of truth and beauty.
Freed is clearly a well-read writer, and a literary nerd at that. Her style recalls Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Borges, Helen DeWitt, Paul Auster—a bygone (or molted?) era when authors built wings out of paper and ink to lift themselves up and transcend the form. Explicit references are made to Marx (many), Bakhtin, Lenin, Adorno, Lorde, Levine, Horkheimer, Jameson. This is a book for book nerds—it feels like a tasty treat confected especially for me to match my DNA. But that hasn’t stopped me from recommending it to almost everyone I meet.
This is a book that doesn’t shy away from getting at the heart of things: of capitalism, of revolution, the heart of gender, of doubt, of trust, of friendship. At the heart of the campus, a soul goes up in flames—it’s such a ripe image to begin the story. There are so many intense, thoughtful moments here, that transport me to a place of deep empathy, and “alex”’s dispatch from the void is one of them.
Freed has been to dark places, and brought back the light—light, in the sense that these moments shine light on the world in all its ugliness. The dark can be comforting; light can be harsh. But what else can we know to be true?
Anyway, if I’m not talking much about the plot it’s because this book inspires me to think in very lofty, high-minded ways. And it’s just so impossible to describe (succinctly). No wonder the back cover simply reads, “This is a campus novel where things go wrong. Half of the profits will go to organizations working with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated trans people.” It’s a labyrinth, it’s a maze, it’s a bold work of fiction that will undoubtedly be on my mind for years and decades to come.
On a different note, I’m not sure any other novel has quite captured the pulse of the strange “techno-dreamland” haze that drooped over Stanford in the mid-to-late 2010s. In the wake of Elizabeth Holmes’ rise and fall, festering in the putridity of Brock Turner, blockchain, venture capitalists, cougar nights, the student body was always restless for something more substantial. More visible, real, less “disruptive” in the sense of concealing labor with an app. Sure, that power-hungry, machinistic segment of the student body existed, but it was never as simple as “insensitive tech geek: bad.” People like Freed were there too (am I giving anything away by saying she went to Stanford?).
“Molting” is an apt metaphor for this book to use, a new world emerging from the carcass of the old. Everyone’s a critic; and only if everyone remains a critic can things start to improve.
December 23, 2024
Odd book. Ambitious. Sometimes brilliant, in a freewheeling way, sometimes falls very flat (the shower scene was painful). Glad I read it though.
July 4, 2025
plot-wise, I think I started feeling a bit lost towards the end, but in terms of style and story, I was entranced every step of the way. the campus and the university are really such beasts.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 27, 2025
book that is way funnier and way more about trans suicide than i expected . excited to wear out recommending it to all my smart friends
December 28, 2025
Brillante y/o neurótico debut + acertada incorporación a la eterna cruzada contra el punto y aparte
April 27, 2024
whom among us hasn’t been in a smoking circle where literally everyone can’t stop talking about the fact that they are smoking cigarettes at that very moment
February 21, 2024
I don’t understand how this could’ve come out of someone’s brain. Weird insane so smart
April 21, 2025
Medium 5
I'm not sure that I fully understood this book, but I can't stop thinking about it
I'm not sure that I fully understood this book, but I can't stop thinking about it
February 20, 2024
This novel has it all. You might think, such a thing cannot encompass totality. You'd be right, but then again, this kind of isn't altogether a novel. It's everything. At some point I thought it was the FBI sending me secret messages in code. At another, I forgot I was reading a book, felt yanked out of the text-reader paradigm, pulled physically from my bed and into an acid trip. There are also passages describing acid trips -- which they do justice to. There's humor, pain, love, beauty, and humor about Trotskyist sects splitting into five. There are spooky children with mysterious powers, visions, and refrains. There is a way that Laura Marling's "Crawled Out of the Sea" applies to a section in this book, in a lesbian way. Need I say more? See for yourself. This book is everything.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews