Oligarchy is a pretty dark tale set in a private girl's boarding school. I enjoyed the humorous viewpoint of the girls, bored and completely isolated from reality. The obsession with having the thinnest body, led by fashion and Instagram selfies, is the main focus of the short novel. I'm not sure whether the issue is treated with the sensitivity that it could be - it's a serious mental health problem, after all - but it does highlight the group competitiveness and ways in which young women can get drawn into body dysmorphia. It also pokes fun at the misguided attempts by the school to counsel the girls with inappropriate speakers. The story goes even darker with a series of suspicious drownings.
I found the story quirky and slightly surreal, which maybe assuaged the unsettling undercurrents of the stories themes. I read at the end that there may be a tv series adaptation - surely bringing the fish-out-of-water Russian point-of-view and the suspicious deaths to the fore.

Natasha, a fifteen year old Russian girl is discovered by her rich father and plucked out of poverty to be sent to an English boarding school to be educated. But what a school! Through the eyes of Natasha we see the weirdness of her contemporaries' daily life. For these are teenage girls obsessed with looks, especially with being thin and soon they are all drawn into dangerous rituals and eating habits.

I found this book rather strange but very enjoyable. It is character driven with a loose plot around the death of one of the girls closely followed by the death of a teacher. There are allegations of sexual abuse but the girls involved don't remember the abuse. In many ways the book seems to me to be a dark commentary on what it is like to be a teenage girl today. I see from the author's acknowledgements that it has been optioned for a tv series. Sounds great! Thanks to Canongate and NetGalley for the ARC.

Oligarchy is the story of Natasha, the daughter of a Russian oligarch, who has been newly reunited with her father and duly sent to boarding school in Britain. The school is a hotbed of girl crushes, eating disorders, and rituals, and Natasha is soon entrenched in the diets and customs. When Natasha's emaciated roommate, Bianca, is found drowned in the lake on school grounds, the school cracks down on the girls' dieting. But girls like these will always find a way to get what they want...

It's hard to write a review of this book, because it's not really about very much at all - it's definitely character driven rather than plot-driven. It's beautifully written with prose that is at times poetic, and others spare, and the characters are gorgeously drawn. It's not the novel to read if you're looking for tons of drama or suspense as there are few thrills to be had, but if you're looking for a restrained, well-written novel with beautifully crafted observations of teenage girls at boarding school and the troubles that are rife in that environment, you could do a lot worse than this book.

I'm a huge Scarlett Thomas fan, and although Oligarchy is very different than her other novels, I very much enjoyed it, and I liked that the difference showed another side to this multi-talented author.

Thank you to NetGalley, who provided me with a free ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was delighted to discover a new book by Scarlett Thomas, and wasn’t disappointed - she has an amazing way of writing about unexpected topics

I have been a fan of the author for a long time as I think she is very original, her books are always sharply observed and humorous. ‘Oligarchy’ is classic Scarlett Thomas in that it pulls no punches but this thought provoking and dark tale is embedded in black humour which I love. This is a book about power and control and there several different ways that the girls we meet in the book are controlled.

The central character is Natasha, who is Russian and the daughter of an oligarch. She is sent to boarding school in England and I reckon this must be the worst one in existence! Here she is thrown into a world where there is a pecking order, a hierarchy whose rules are initially baffling, but where the outside world in the form of social media, especially Instagram is of paramount importance. The author clearly demonstrates how social media might pervert the minds of the impressionable into a certain way of thinking, that it has power and a hold in the same way as an oligarch heads a criminal organisation. How you look, what you wear, where you go are all judged, often harshly. Natasha encounters eating disorders which is the central theme as this has control over the girls and wields enormous power. Food or the lack of, is also an oligarch as calories are frantically countered and punishing exercise is undertaken as the obsession with being thin dominates them..However, there is also a physical oligarch too who controls the girls and their minds and Natasha sets out to unmask this oligarch. I found this very shocking when I realised exactly what occurs to the girls and how their minds are manipulated.

This book is very well written. The author has a very original way of writing and she is very funny. Some of the ideas the girls have such as that sherbet dib-dobs (we call them dib-dabs, sherbet fountains. I used to love the explosion of sherbet in my mouth!) are wholesome because they are old fashioned which made me laugh. The characters are mostly very likeable especially Natasha, and her Aunt Sonja and I also love Tiffanie with her glorious French accented English. However, the book has a flip side. There are moments of sadness as the girls strife to recover happiness, the thinner they become they lose their real selves. They may have light bodies but they have heavy hearts. Indeed, as the book progresses it gets darker and twistier as some of the girls see most things as pointless. I like the way we see into the mind of Bianca whose disappearance is the subject of Natasha’s investigation and Natasha herself. It feels authentic and how a young girl may reflect on the things that are happening around them and try to make sense of it. Natasha is heroic in lots of ways and she’s certainly the hero of this tale.

Overall, it’s a terrific but terrifying read. It is a no holds barred presentation of how people can be controlled which is very scary. It makes you think, you ask questions, it’s shocking, it’s funny, it’s mysterious, it’s sad, it’s rule breaking, it’s imaginative and very current. Many thanks to Cannongate and NetGalley for the ARC.

Oligarchy is a sharp, dark novel about rich teenagers, eating disorders, and the secrets of a boarding school. Tash is the daughter of a Russian oligarch and has suddenly been sent to an English boarding school. The wifi use is restricted, the hierarchies are strange, and everyone is obsessed with looks and eating even though they can barely get on Instagram without surreptitious means. She ends up part of the group of troublemakers, all willing to go further than the rest, but when one of them, Bianca, vanishes and the school seems weirdly inept at dealing with the eating disorder epidemic, it seems there could be more at play.

The first things to know about this novel are that it is very much focused around disordered eating in various ways, and that it is a kind of twisted adult novel rather than the YA title some people might assume from a very brief summary. Coming into the book with the right expectations seems important, as then its blend of fantastical and deeply cutting will be making points and exploring darkness rather than seeming in strange taste. The third person narration is mostly around Tash's perspective, with a side plot of Russian-backwater-to-riches and a shady aunt who lives in London that you almost want more of. In general, the book is more focused on small details and dark, witty moments than the overall pace of narrative, and these are what creates its tone, taking both teenage peer pressure and power abuse in boarding schools to particular heights for effect.

Oligarchy is an in-your-face novel that won't be for everyone, a dark look at body image and how the internet can exacerbate mental states around things like eating disorders that also manages to be witty and strange.