I thoroughly enjoyed Rachel Donoghue’s The Temple House Vanishing this month - a perfect atmospheric ‘dark academia’ read about the mysterious disappearance of a pupil and her dashing art teacher - and thought I’d revisit a few of my other favourite school-set stories. (And I didn’t even mention The Secret History! Oh… now I did.)

Frost in May by Antonia White

I was extremely obsessed with this book aged around thirteen. First published in the early 1930s, it’s the portrait of a girl enduring the strict regime of a convent school - in the sequels she eventually spirals into madness - but what I apparently took from it at that impressionable age was: Catholicism is ridiculously glamorous and I want in. After the resulting short-lived religious fervour waned, I was left with a lifelong passion for churches and Christian art and history. This is on my list for a re-read as I’m looking forward to seeing what impressions I take from this classic novel almost thirty years later. I love this elegant Virago edition and there’s a brilliant Backlisted podcast about this book which you can hear here.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

Deservedly an absolute classic. The charismatic and cultured Miss Brodie is in her prime, as she constantly reminds her girls, but her passions will change the lives of the honoured and loyal Brodie set in ways none of them could have predicted. There’s a film with Dame Maggie Smith I remember loving and it’s always Maggie I see while reading this. This is my battered and much-loved old edition but I love the cover of this newer edition.

Babel by R F Kuang

Babel is really excellent - I loved the depth of world building. It’s like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell with a molten core of anti-colonialism. Thrilling, intricate, confronting and compelling - Kuang doesn’t shy away from the hangovers of colonialism that cannot be neatly consigned to the past - this is a big, clever, exciting read. It’s geeky and intricate and the Oxford it evokes, where translation and an acane kind of silver-working is studied as a form of magic, is wildly atmospheric.

Hey Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland

In the early 2000s I read pretty much anything Douglas Coupland wrote (I think they made a rule, we all did) and this dramatic and moving novel about a high school shooting was one I loved. Also due a re-read - this novel haunted me and I wonder how it’s dated in the intervening years. Not quite as well as I might have thought, given I can’t find it on Bookshop.org and there’s a two week wait at Waterstones at the time of writing. It’s horrifying to think of how many times since its 2003 publication we have endured news of more massacres.

For non-fiction counterpoints, I worked on the publicity for the anniversary reissue of Dave Cullen’s horrifying, seminal Columbine, which looks at the shooting in forensic detail and also examines the hideous subculture celebrating the perpetrators. Dave’s Parkland focuses on the March For Our Lives movement galvanised by the teenage survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Their courage, skills, collaborative approach, laser focus and the enormous numbers of people they have mobilised to fight for tighter gun control laws are all inspiring even though, depressingly, there’s still so far to go years later.

The Divines by Ellie Eaton

This was a great book club read. The world of 90s schoolgirls (from the hair flicking to the thirst for male attention) was almost uncomfortably well captured for readers of that vintage like me, and there is of course a mystery about a pupil who came to a tragic end. The school is as atmospheric and archaic and crumbling as you could wish.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The apparently idyllic Hailsham School is hiding a dark secret - the role for which its students are being prepared in a dystopian England. Deeply affecting, at times horrifying, and hugely suspenseful, this is an unforgettable book about friendship, memory and mortality.

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

Madam is set in Caldonbrae Hall, on a remote Scottish peninsula, is an exclusive school for elite young ladies, but a newly arrived Classics teacher finds that this bastion of traditional values has sinister secrets. I loved this feminist, gothic page-turner.

Threadneedle by Cari Thomas

I really loved Threadneedle, a very fun concoction of teenage witches flexing their emerging powers, mysterious crimes and even a magical library underneath the British Library. Very hooky and very enjoyable. I’m pleased to see that the sequel Shadowstitch is now published.

Also recommended:

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman - a very Secret History vibe

Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood - not exclusively school-set, but those are the bits I love best

Claudine at School by Colette - saucy and very enjoyable French novel published in 1900

The Worst Witch series by Jill Murphy - for anyone who, like me, stopped reading in the 1980s there are new sequels written since

The Betrayals by Bridget Collins - I loved the shadowy cloisters of the Montverre school where the mysterious Grand Jeu is learnt and practised

Please note this post includes affiliate links and I may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you) when you buy books through these links.