The Wildelings - by Lisa Harding (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Named one of the best books of spring by Harper's BAZAAR and one of the best of the year by The Economist!

A girl so desperate to belong that she lets herself be remade.

Jessica and Linda have been inseparable since childhood, their friendship shaped by abandonment, survival and a shared need to belong. At Wilde, an elite university in Dublin, they arrive determined to remake themselves. Jessica, fiercely ambitious and drawn to the theatre, is used to leading. Linda, more fragile, follows. But when they meet Mark, an older philosophy student with a magnetic presence, the balance between them begins to shift.

Mark recognizes their vulnerabilities immediately and draws them into his world. Linda becomes his girlfriend, then his project, reshaped by his attention. Jessica becomes his actress, her ambition pulling her deeper into his orbit. Around them, a tight-knit group forms, but under Mark's influence, loyalties begin to fracture.

Over the course of a single year, relationships are tested, identities shift, and tensions build. Mark feeds on what unfolds, turning it into creative material as he moves towards becoming the celebrated playwright he is destined to be. By the end of that year, under the sway of his influence, a line is crossed that leads to devastating consequences for Linda.

Years later, Jessica is still trying to understand her part in what happened. How much was she shaped, and how much did she choose? A dark, unsettling novel about friendship, ambition, manipulation and the price of being seen.

Review Quotes

"A searing exploration into our deepest desires and insecurities. I adored it." - Heather Darwent, bestselling author of The Things We Do To Our Friends

"Lisa Harding's The Wildelings, in the tradition of dark academia, shocks with the cruelties of belonging, the seductive power wielded in friendships, the impulse to control and subjugate. Impeccably paced, dark and disturbingly honest, The Wildelings reveals campus life as theatre of cruelty; but the real stagecraft lies in Harding's ability to excavate the still beating heart of a shared past and bonds beneath those brutalities. Riveting, addictive and, ultimately, beautifully human." - Una Mannion, author of Tell Me What I Am and A Crooked Tree

"With pitch pure dialogue, and a plot that weaves in and around the theatre until the edges of reality blur, Lisa Harding presents us with a psychologically gripping story about personal manipulation and the imbalance of power in intimate relationships. A powerful performance." - Jane Urquhart, award-winning author of In Winter I Get Up at Night

"Arrives to fill the Secret History-shaped hole in your lives ... Gloriously entertaining." - The Observer

"Dark, blistering and full of theatrics, The Wildelings is an electric exploration of control, guilt, and one young woman's fight to free herself. I was hooked from the very start."

"Lisa Harding will haunt readers with the psychological drama of The Wildelings, a compulsively readable novel in which a woman looks back on her college days and a long-lost friendship....shocking, electric, impossible to turn from. With this atmospheric roller coaster of a novel, Harding offers pulsing intensity, gut-wrenching emotional upheaval, and high drama in every sense." - Shelf Awareness

"With echoes of Donna Tartt's "The Secret History"....This is dark academia at its most gripping." - The Economist

"The Wildelings is a shiver-inducing delight. I found myself reading when I should have been doing a million other things, unable to tear myself away from these bewitching characters, Harding's beautiful prose, and the prickly suspicion that a dark surprise was waiting for me on every page." - Lauren Grodstein, author of A Dog in Georgia and We Must Not Think of Ourselves