In the years since Donna Tartt’s classic novel, The Secret History, books about young people studying mysterious academic or spiritual traditions to murderous ends have multiplied. This genre, coined “dark academia”, has become a popular narrative and stylistic choice: author’s weave mystery novels from ominous settings and foggy campuses populated by troubled students. Emily Temple’s debut novel, The Lightness, is the most recent entry into this dark academia canon. The protagonist, sixteen year old Olivia, runs away from home after the dissolution of her parents’ marriage and her father’s disappearance a year prior, to the last place her father visited: a levitation center high up in the mountains. The levitation center hosts retreats for Buddhist practitioners like Olivia’s father, and is said to be “the only bit of land left in America where levitation was still possible, at least for those with the correct set of aptitudes”.
The summer that Olivia visits, the levitation center is hosting a summer-long retreat for teens, which Olivia coins the “Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls.” Amongst the participants in this camp are girls from a variety of backgrounds struggling with authority and discipline, described by Olivia as, “slick-finish girls, cat-eye girls, hot-blood girls. They were girls who revelled … They were girls who left marks. They were girls who snuck.” Amongst this group is a clique of three who immediately fascinate Olivia: the leader, Serena, the longtime levitation center patron about whom rumors swirl, the beautiful and soft Laurel, and the purple-haired and physically dominant Janet. Olivia develops a fascination with this witchy group of three, these beautiful girls who seem to operate with their own set of rules separate from the rest. Olivia is eventually welcomed into the clique when she demonstrates her knowledge of Buddhist teachings, and discovers that the girls have decided over the summer to learn how to actually levitate, Serena claiming that she witnessed the gardener do it years ago.
Sneaking out of their bunks at night, Olivia, Laurel, and Janet walk through the woods to meet in Serena’s tent where they explore possible avenues to levitation: engaging in ASMR, breathing techniques, fasting, and facilitating their own blackouts to try to alter their consciousness. Serena seems most invested in the levitation: she is a longtime student of Buddhist teaching who is constantly spouting platitudes (“Neither ugliness nor beauty exists on an absolute level”), and her rigorous dedication to levitation becomes all-consuming for Olivia. The girls become fully ensconced in their study of human suffering, beauty, and transcendence, contemplating ideas about the self and the world around them. While Olivia seems fully bought-in to this cult of Serena, it becomes increasingly clear the something is amiss: the girls are being totally manipulated by their fearless leader, who may be more image-obsessed than she professes. The atmosphere begins to sours, as the tenuous bond between these girls begins to feel forced.
The novel is written from the perspective of a grown Olivia, reflecting on a formative summer where she attempted to get closer to her missing father and farther from her mother, dealing with her abandonment by becoming involved in a practice taught to her by her beloved parent. There is a great deal of foreboding, as the adult Olivia laments the violence that bookended that summer, beginning with the total breakdown of her relationship with her mother, and the mysterious death that Olivia feels partially responsible for during the final week at the levitation center. Perhaps even more fascinating than the social politics of Olivia’s clique at the levitation center is her reflections on the collapse of her family: on the ways in which her parents grew apart from each other and then her, and how Olivia’s tumultuous relationship with her mother (especially after her father’s disappearance) is perhaps more central to her story than she thought.
The Lightness is a fascinating mediation on the spectrum of vulnerability and power that young women occupy: a coming of age story that contemplates manipulation, desire, and selfhood. Temple writes with a sharp and stylistically inclined voice that perfectly captures female anger and loss of innocence in young adulthood. While the conclusion was not totally satisfying for this reader (I will not spoil it, however), the novel seems to have some deeply interesting questions on its mind. For reader’s who’ve enjoyed the writing of Emma Cline (The Girls) or Ottessa Moshfegh (Death in Her Hands, etc.), this novel is certainly a worthwhile and well-written journey.
Further Reading: If you haven’t yet read Donna Tartt’s classic, The Secret History, you must. (My full review) This novel feels like a female-centric riff on that story.