15 Fantastic Campus Novels

Somewhere in between the young adult romances and the literary fiction for grown-ups you’ll find the oft-overlooked campus novel. These books are usually set on university campuses, but that’s not the only thing that ties them together. They tend to explore the extremes of human experience (i.e., sex and death), navigate treacherous power imbalances, and very little actual studying gets done. Here are fifteen fantastic campus novels that take you right into the heart of the ivory tower.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History is a campus novel, set at a fictional(ish) elite liberal arts college in New England. I say “ish” because Donna Tartt based it on Bennington College, where she was a student in the ’80s. (She even dedicates the novel to fellow student Bret Easton Ellis.) The story follows six classics students, who become increasingly isolated from the rest of the school community as they deal with the fall-out of a murder. First published back in 1992, it went on to define the sub-genre of dark academia, top best-seller lists, and win awards (not to mention a legion of fans around the world). Read my full review of The Secret History here.

The Art Of Fielding by Chad Harbach

For a significant swathe of high-school graduates, university campuses are little more than launch pads for successful sporting careers, so naturally many campus novels are actually sports novels in disguise. The Art Of Fielding explores the high-stakes world of college sports, where one routine throw in a game of baseball goes disastrously wrong and up-ends the lives of multiple characters. What could be a simple story about a baseball team becomes a warm-hearted novel about the outer reaches of ambition and the true nature of commitment.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

Technically, Normal People is only partially set on the grounds of Trinity College, and yet it’s become emblematic of a generation of campus novels. The story follows two sometimes-lovers, Connell and Marianne, through the ebbs and flows of life as they graduate high-school and attend university. It’s basically the folie à deux of young love in novel form, but let’s be clear: it’s not a romance novel. For most of the four year period, Connell and Marianne are barely friends, let alone lovers, and they never seem to actually like each other all that much. Read my full review of Normal People here.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Bookworms can only dream of living out a love story like that found in The Marriage Plot. Studious English major Madeleine Hanna is writing her thesis on the marriage plots of Jane Austen and George Eliot, when she finds herself caught in the middle of one. Will she fall for the charismatic Leonard, or the lifelong friend Mitchell? Can the writers of the 19th century really teach her anything of use about the foils and foibles of the human heart? Can her wide-eyed idealism survive outside the hallowed halls of academia? This is one of the best campus novels for book nerds who tend to overthink.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

The campus setting of Prep is a prestigious boarding school, rather than a university, but thematically it still fits the definition of a campus novel. An intelligent (or, some might say, precocious) fourteen-year-old is transplanted from her affectionate family to an imposing Massachusetts institution, and quickly learns some harsh lessons about wealth, power, and privilege. She’s forced to find her feet in a completely foreign world, one where summer is a verb and entitlement is a given, and she finds out how quickly her tenuous position can be wrenched away.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Another campus novel, another New England college – this time, it’s a highly-selective MFA program at the fictional Warren University. Bunny follows Samantha Mackey, an outsider in her class with a dark imagination and an instant dislike for the twee pretty privileged girls who study alongside her. Inevitably, though, she’s drawn into their world, and discovers that it’s not as saccharine as it appears from the other side. Readers follow her down the rabbit hole and into the blurred edges of reality, to discover the consequences of creativity. Read my full review of Bunny here.

White Noise by Don Delillo

When you pick up a Don Delillo novel, you know you’re going to get something a bit weird – and his foray into campus novels, White Noise, is no exception. It follows a year in the life of Jack Gladney, professor of Hitler studies (yes, you read that right) at a liberal arts college in Middle America. He and his fourth wife, Babette, are bound together not by their passionate love for one another, but their mutual overwhelming fear of death. There are airborne toxins, brand-name consumerism, and ceaseless ‘white noise’ consuming the lives of all the characters. So, yes, it’s weird, but it’s a fascinating satire of academic life nonetheless.

The Rules Of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis

The Rules Of Attraction is one of the few campus novels that’s perhaps better known for its movie adaptation than the original book. Even rarer, the adaptation was endorsed by the author Bret Easton Ellis, as ‘coming closest to capturing his sensibility and recreating the world of his novels’. Still, it’s worth reading this story in its original format, if only to be gobsmacked by Ellis’s prose. The three primary narrators attend the fictional Camden College, where they’re much more interested in forming love triangles, taking drugs, and attending ‘end of the world’ parties than they are opening a book or attending a class.

Come And Get It by Kiley Reid

One of the newest campus novels to hit our shelves is Come And Get It, the second novel by hot new American writer Kiley Reid. In it, she explores the idea that we can have everything we want as long as we’re willing to pay the price. Millie Cousins is desperate to graduate and get a well-paying job so she can buy her own home. When a visiting professor offers her an opportunity, she jumps at the chance, despite it being very obviously too good to be true. She’s drawn into an illicit intrigue, and this tense novel builds to a stomach-churningly violent climax. Read my full review of Come And Get It here.

I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

The prospect of returning to one’s high-school is fraught with anxiety for most normal people – but Bodie Kane, the main character of I Have Some Questions For You, has more reason for apprehension than most. She spent four years at a New Hampshire boarding school, trying to outrun the fallout of a family tragedy, and now as an adult she’s invited to return, this time to teach a course of her own. The homecoming lures her to re-open some old wounds, revisiting the violent crime that marred her senior year, the murder of a former roommate. The case has always had a question mark hanging over it – did Bodie have the answer all along? Read my full review of I Have Some Questions For You here.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

If you like your campus novels to be of the twisty-turny, heart-pounding variety, you’ll love The Maidens. Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled therapist, convinced that Edward Fosca – the untouchable and charismatic Greek tragedy professor of Cambridge University – is a murderer. She has no way of proving it, though, which only fuels her obsession with a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. Her determination to prove Fosca’s guilt threatens everything, her career and her closest relationships, but surely it’s worth it if Mariana can uncover the truth? Read my full review of The Maidens here.

Admission by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Most campus novels focus on the students or the professors – but there are plenty more university staff with stories of their own. Admission focuses on an Ivy League admissions officer (as the title would suggest), a 38-year-old woman who hides from her past by throwing herself head-first into her demanding job. But she can’t hide forever: Portia is soon faced with a life-altering decision, one that parallels the life-altering decisions she makes for prospective students every day. This campus novel really offers the best of both worlds, a compelling and emotional story with a behind-the-scenes peek at the college admissions process.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Many campus novels examine the tale as old as time – the beautiful and ambitious female student and the lustful older professor – but few do it with the penetrating insight of Kate Elizabeth Russell in My Dark Vanessa. Vanessa Wye was only fifteen years old when she entered into an affair with her forty-something professor, but she’s confident everything that happened was above board… until, many years older and wiser, she receives a call from her former paramour asking her to testify to his character in the wake of a sexual abuse allegation. Vanessa is forced to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about her past, including her subsequent crush on a college professor, and the nature of power and victimhood. Read my full review of My Dark Vanessa here.

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie is one of the OG campus novels, a classic of the genre that has informed all that has come since. The story opens in 1930s Edinburgh. The titular Miss Jean Brodie – who is, indeed, in her prime, and doesn’t waste a chance to remind you of that fact – is a teacher at a school for girls. She has selected for herself six ten-year-old students, her special favourites, the “Brodie set”. Under her mentorship, these six girls come of age – but in the future, one of them betrays her. This is a story of mystery, suspicion, lust and culpability. Read my full review of The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie here.

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

Former theater kids will instantly recognise and identify with the beginning of Trust Exercise. Students at a highly-competitive suburban performing arts school throw themselves wholeheartedly into studying their craft, and sometimes that passion bubbles over. David and Sarah fall head-over-heels in love with each other, an affair of great interest to their charismatic acting teacher, Mr Kingsley. All of them feel like they live in a bubble, protected from the harsh realities of the Real World, but those harsh realities are about to pop that bubble in a big, scary way. Read my full review of Trust Exercise here.