I fan girl hard for Lisa Lutz. Reading her Spellman Files series (about a family of private detectives who are always tailing or phone tapping at least one other family member) was a treat I reserved for special reading occasions, like after I finished an onerous task, and I put off reading the final novel in the series because I did not want it to end. In fact, I adore Lutz’s work so much that she’s one of the writers whose names I frequently search on bookselling websites, social media, and her own author website so as to know exactly when her next novel will be released. Needless to say, I have been anxiously awaiting the release of her most recent novel, The Swallows.
For fellow Lutzites (Lutzians? Lutz Loons?), the archetypes of her previous novels are still present in her new novel: dysfunctional parents, witty women who somehow still don’t have their life put together, precocious teen girls who are almost too smart for their own good, and lovable male allies who prove to be dependable sidekicks for the female protagonists. While the characters feel consistent with others in Lutz’s fictional universe, the story itself is quite a bit darker than the beloved Spellman series.
In The Swallows, set at Stonebridge (a less than prestigious boarding school in Vermont), Lutz depicts a level of scumbaggery heretofore unseen in her other works. The novel’s conflicts center on a series of sexual scandals (some at other schools and in the past as well as at Stonebridge) that, once uncovered, spiral into tragic and disturbing consequences for everyone involved.
Set in 2009, The Swallows focuses on a pre-#MeToo era but one which is no less filled with predators and prey as well as drastically inequal power dynamics. Smartly, Lutz does not divide the heroes and villains neatly along gender lines nor between faculty/staff and students. The spiral of abuse and retaliation becomes increasingly messy as more about the scandals are uncovered. As a former teacher, I found the corrupt and enabling school administration and teachers extremely unsettling (and that is due to Lutz’s skill in depicting these characters and showing their flaws). This is not a feel-good story and it is to Lutz’s credit that it is not. In fact, the overarching metaphor for the book is one of war with section titles such as “Allies,” “The Army,” and quotes from the likes of Winston Churchill and Sun Tzu prefacing each section. Ultimately, I read the book not as offering solutions to the abuses it documents but as showing what happens when people try to dismantle dehumanizing systems.
Overall, I thought Lutz’s portrayal of the abuse and its intersections with gender was thoughtful and refrained from using stereotypes. However, the book is almost purely heteronormative in the way it documents sexual relationships. I wish Lutz had included LBGTQ+ characters or just addressed these relationships as some part of the school’s social scene. It would have added a different perspective on so many of the male-female heterosexual conflicts and been more realistic for a 2009 high school. Still, readers interested in gender and power dynamics, specifically how they impact people long before they reach the workplace, will find a lot to think about in this novel.
So, if you’re still not sure whether or not to read The Swallows, I suspect the Netflix headings for it would be something along the lines of: Boarding School Capers, Strong Female Leads (way to turn something nice into something weird, Netflix), and Feminist YA. Since the assorted algorithms of Amazon, Spotify, et al, have utterly ruined me, I tend to sort books in a similar way (especially since I sometimes cluster read books in a particular genre over time). Read The Swallows if you liked: any of Lutz’s previous novels, A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro, Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson, or The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart. (Or, if you haven’t read these other books already, go ahead and check them out. I enjoyed all of them!)
Wired Wordsmith 