6 Must-Read Novels For College Students

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride
The Lesser Bohemians is a campus novel for the intrepid reader. It’s written in a stream-of-consciousness style – don’t let that put you off – and offers a sharply honest take on the experiences of first years, and the highs and occasional horrors of finding one’s way in the world. Eily has moved from Ireland to London to attend drama school. She meets and starts having sex with Stephen, an older, almost-famous actor. Our protagonist may spend more time in her north London bedsit than at university, but The Lesser Bohemians gifts us a determined young female hero who moves to the big city for college, and struggles, in the face of new sexual freedom, to stay true to herself.

The Idiot by Elif Batuman
Or as I call it: A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Woman. Elif Batuman’s semi-autobiographical debut is a novel about discovering oneself. But it goes further, into the realm of how we shape our own destiny. The year is 1995 and email is brand spanking new. Selin, a tall, highly-strung Turkish-American from New Jersey, winds up at Harvard and finds herself overwhelmed by the challenges posed by campus life – from stupefying academicism to murky relationships. With a penchant for reading Russian literature, she takes on the Herculean task of analysing the impact of language on identity. There are nostalgia-inducing vignettes of campus life and the ongoing search for identity, but what makes The Idiot so unputdownable is the unerring accuracy of Batuman’s depiction of that all-too-awkward transition into adulthood.

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien
I may be doxxed for this one, but every Irish novel I’ve ever read pales in comparison to this mammoth. Better yet, it’s a campus novel that truly stands alone. At-Swim-Two-Birds centres on an unnamed narrator who lives with his uncle as he completes his undergraduate course at UCD.  He spends most of his time in his room, conceiving a novel about a man named Dermot Trellis, who in turn writes his own story, with a cast of characters he creates and forces to live alongside him in a seedy Dublin hotel. Trellis’ characters span centuries, from Irish heroes and fairies to regular Joes. As At Swim progresses, Trellis’ characters gain agency and start to plot an uprising against their author. Lovers of Inception will find O’Brien’s story-within-a-story yarn both a mind-fuck and a masterpiece.

Normal People by Sally Rooney
Ah, yes. The novel that influenced swathes of teens and twenty-somethings to cut their fringe and put Humanities at the top of their CAO. In truth, few books have depicted Irish campus life quite like Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Many of us know a Connell and Marianne, two sheepish teenagers who move from their rural hometown to the big smoke, hoping to find their place among the dusty libraries and roundtable tutorials at Trinity. Connell struggles to come out of his shell, with college life being a crude awakening from the comforts of secondary school. Marianne, on the other hand, blossoms at uni, after being ostracised for most of her adolescence. Bound by the red string of fate, the pair grow apart and reunite in a constant flux. It’s an extremely familiar depiction of third-level life: academic competition; smoke-filled student gaffs; haughty societies; class consciousnes; and high-stakes romance...

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Nabokov wrote a couple of novels set in the wood-panelled world of academia, and Pnin would be a worthy choice for this list. But we’re going to nominate Pale Fire instead. The complex 1962 knockout is presented as a 999-line poem by a fictional writer, titled ‘Pale Fire’ and accompanied by commentary from an academic colleague. It’s one of the defining works of metafiction, relaying – with Nabokov’s characteristic style and finesse – a remarkable, if still not fully understood, tale of two academics.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
No list of college reads would be complete without Donna Tartt’s magnum opus about a rag-tag group of highbrow students at an elite liberal arts college. Practically inventing Dark Academia, The Secret History is narrated by misfit Richard Papen, as he takes up with a secretive collective of Classics majors who end up murdering one of their friends as part of an arcane ritual. Equal parts murder mystery, coming-of-age campus novel and Greek tragedy, the novel brilliantly explores the rules and hierarchies of academia. It’s also an unforgettable portrayal of young adulthood, showing what happens when young people get their first taste of adulthood and behave abhorrently.

Read the full Student Special in the current issue of Hot Press – out now: