Love & Virtue - Diana Reid

Love & Virtue

By: Diana Reid

Paperback | 29 September 2021 | Edition Number 1

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Sex. Power. Consent.

Whenever I say I was at university with Eve, people ask me what she was like, sceptical perhaps that she could have always been as whole and self-assured as she now appears. To which I say something like: ‘People are infinitely complex.’ But I say it in such a way so pregnant with misanthropy that it’s obvious I hate her.


Michaela and Eve are two bright, bold women who befriend each other their first year at a residential college at university, where they live in adjacent rooms. They could not be more different; one assured and popular – the other uncertain and eager-to-please. But something happens one night in O-week – a drunken encounter, a foggy memory that will force them to confront the realities of consent and wrestle with the dynamics of power.

Initially bonded by their wit and sharp eye for the colleges’ mix of material wealth and moral poverty, Michaela and Eve soon discover how fragile friendship is, and how capable of betrayal they both are.

Written with a strikingly contemporary voice that is both wickedly clever and incisive, issues of consent, class and institutional privilege, and feminism become provocations for enduring philosophical questions we face today.

Staff Review
by Olivia Fricot

According to its author, Love & Virtue is a novel that apparently wouldn’t have been written without the pandemic-induced lockdown. If we’re about to be inundated with a wave of novels written during this time, let them all be as good as this one. The debut novel of Sydney author Diana Reid and the second to come from Ultimo Press, Love & Virtue is a ruthlessly perceptive campus novel that actually lives up to its premise.

Our heroine is Michaela Burns, a first year university student from Canberra who initially struggles to find her place amongst her much wealthier peers at a residential college within a prestigious Sydney university. Overcompensating with alcohol, Michaela eventually crosses paths with the enigmatic Eve Herbert-Shaw, her neighbour and classmate, and the two girls form a passionate friendship. But when the true nature of a drunken O-Week sexual encounter is revealed to her, however, Michaela feels her world and perspective shift violently beneath her, particularly as Eve starts to take ownership of Michaela’s story in the pursuit of personal and feminist acclaim.

With its fascinating cast of characters and astute ruminations on human nature, Love & Virtue is a novel that won’t leave you easily. Much has and will be made of Diana Reid’s compassionate handling of the sexual assault and consent storyline, and rightfully so. This novel illuminates the complex emotional experience of one assault survivor, much like Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa, and frames it within a larger story of gender relations and structural complicity. Michaela’s experience of sexual assault is not invoked as a mere plot point, but as the trigger for a thoughtful exploration of morality and human behaviour. The moment of its revelation is a gut punch, masterfully handled.

Outside of the novel’s rather depressing cultural relevance, however, lies another compelling aspect which I hope readers won’t overlook. To me, the strength of Reid’s debut lies in her handling of the complexities of certain female friendships — the intensity, the passion, the blurring of personal boundaries, and the competitiveness — and how these things calcify when put under the pressure of academia. Michaela and Eve are similarly intelligent, but their confidence wavers almost in direct relation to their wealth, despite both being attractive young white women. As the novel’s narrator, we are witness to Michaela’s desire for love, power, and knowledge, and how this makes her emotionally vulnerable to someone like Eve. In contrast, Reid imbues Eve’s character with reckless audacity, of a kind which makes her an unpredictable and endlessly interesting literary creation. Reading the interactions between the two girls might make you queasy with dread (or recognition …), but you’ll find yourself rewarded with the book’s brilliant epilogue.

As a novel about the endlessly relevant themes of sex, love, and consent, but also just as a novel in its own right, Love & Virtue succeeds and should be lauded. I’m eagerly looking forward to talking about it when everyone else gets the chance to read it come this time next week.
Industry Reviews
'an absolute cracker, Love & Virtue lobs right into the current moment with a clarifying light. I hope EVERYONE reads this book.' * Helen Garner *
'I have been chewing on this book for days now. Compelling reading. So well written. Complex. I keep turning it over in my mind and I want to talk about it!' * Hannah Kent *
'An extraordinary new voice in Aussie lit.' * Zoe Foster Blake *
'Loved it...It's electrifying' * Annabel Crabb *
'Love and Virtue is an accomplished novel - by turns funny and furious, and full of the plangent longing and confusion of early adulthood.' -- Fiona Wright * The Saturday Paper *
'Love & Virtue is a formidable debut novel. The writing is punchy and clever, with characters so deeply drawn that they feel like friends and enemies from a former life.' -- Zoya Patel * The Guardian Australia *
'I inhaled it...an amazing book' * Mia Freedman *
'Reid writes with ferocity and intelligence, and this novel demands attention and commands respect.' -- Anna Carew-Reid * Sunday Times Magazine *
'Unputdownable, her rich and resplendent detail distils the Australian campus experience with cutting insight, ultimately leading the audience to contemplate its trenchant central question: are you a good person, or do you just look like one?' -- Noah Vaz * Law Society Journal *
'Fans of Sally Rooney will gravitate to this compelling read that centres on feminism, power and sex in the lives of Australian university students.' -- Maggie Zhou * Refinery 29 Australia *
'Reid is a young author to watch.' * Marie Claire *
'Love and Virtue captures the near-erotic thrill of being a young woman, alone and adrift, who finds, in another young woman, an intellectual equal ... Like Elena and Lila in Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, a touchstone for Reid, their spark feels charged, given to exploding.' -- Neha Kale * Sydney Morning Herald *
'wonderfully readable prose, offering a nuanced and often very funny portrait of privilege and betrayal that probes complex questions about consent, trust and what it means to be a truly "good" person.'
-- Gemma Nisbet * The West Australian *
'The prose crackles fiercely, luring readers in with phrases to mull over and taste before devouring the next delicious sentence.' -- Annabel Harz * Artshub *
'a surprisingly gripping and very clever look at friendship, power and consent at a university.' -- Jason Steger * The Age *
'A clever, well-written exploration of the explosive cocktail of sex, consent, class, privilege and power...' * Sydney Morning Herald *
'Love & Virtue is a delight.' * The Australian *
'Love & Virtue beautifully captures the complex contradictions of new adulthood, with its alternately thrilling and terrifying new freedoms, and the tug of war between the pressure of peer conformity and the lure of becoming more yourself.' * The Big Issue *
'A punchy read that digs deep into its topics without fear of their uncomfortable and sticky nuances, it's just as likely to make you laugh as it is to make you cry.' * Harper's Bazaar *
'Reid explores themes of power, privilege and consent in her captivating debut novel.' * Sunday Life *

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