Scarlett Thomas — Oligarchy

Canongate Books 2019 Paperback, 192pp. Oligarchy is Scarlett Thomas's fierce and brilliant new novel about power, privilege, and peer pressure. When Natasha, daughter of a Russian oligarch, arrives for her first day at an all-girl British boarding school, she finds herself thrown into a world of fierce pecking orders, eating disorders, and Instagram angst. Then her friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, and the world of the school gets ever darker and even weirder. Scarlett Thomas's first adult fiction since 2015 is a major return. Wildly frank, funny, and full of humanity, Oligarchy reminds us how insightful, vulnerable, brilliant, and misunderstood teenagers are, never more so than now. (ISBN: 9781786898029). Very Good.