If We Were Villains

This book came to me highly and yet underwhelmingly recommended by obscure book bloggers I like to follow and I definitely had my doubts, but most, if not all, were assuaged at one point or another.

If We Were Villains is the debut novel by author M.L. Rio and follows closely the pragmatic premise of the older The Secret History, a novel about a small knit group of college students who descend into anarchy and become killers. Villains is similar in premise, yet different in execution and those differences make the crucial impact between a book I liked and a book I loved. 

    So. This book is rife with Shakespeare. No hyperbole intended, this book has Shakespeare dripping from the pages, leaping off of words, and scrambled madly on every surface. To say this book is a homage to Shakespeare would be selling it lightly. That being said, if you don’t like Shakespeare this book is probably not your cup of English breakfast tea.

The author is obviously very influenced and passionate about Shakespeare and his collected folio and it oozes from every orifice. I, for one, found it fascinating, but I understand that most normal people do not want to ask “how was your night?” and get “Swift as a shadow, short as any dream” in response.

Although, no judgement here, if Shakespeare is what you like, then kudos to you. But this reference to Shakespeare seemed important to mention from the onset, so consider yourself forewarned moving forward. 

    Other than the Bard, the book revolves around seven thespians at a small, elite Fine Arts college named Dellecher in which our seven protagonists are all fourth-year theater majors. Now, think of the most elite, pretentious, and cripplingly obsessed small school or group you can think of. Now times that by ten. Dellecher on the outside runs as an esteemed Fine Arts institution, but really, through the course of the play, the university coming across more like a feverish cult becomes more and more apparent.

However, something I adore about Rio is that nothing is spelled out for you. Rio is almost like an objective third party observer along with the rest of us instead of the masterful creator. She observes and points out thoughts, behaviors, and settings, but leaves everything, sometimes to frustration, up to interpretation. 

    These seventh years act only in Shakespeare productions, but not only that. They breathe Shakespeare, drink Shakespeare, and speak Shakespeare, often colloquially and without preamble.

Once again, as an English teacher and a lover of literature, this didn’t bother me, I was more obsessed with the social implications of how this made them feel special and connected and “different” than others, versus the elitism of the actual prose itself. 

    But everything changes once their roles start oscillating into their real lives as well, and the line between stage and curtain becomes blurry until it is altogether impossible to differentiate. Everything comes to a screeching, deafening halt when one of their own is murdered. Gruesomely. Bloody. Horrifyingly. 

    The rest of the novel plays out like a play itself, often with Rio interjecting stage names for dialogue instead of natural dialogue tags. And instead of chapter parts, she has labeled it into acts and scenes. As Shakespeare put it himself: “All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances;”

    I could not have summarized this novel/play hybrid better myself. As the characters deal with the aftermath of the death of one of their own, they slowly start to unravel at the seams as secrets get out of control, feelings escalate into raging tornadoes, and consequences of doing nothing are almost worse than doing something.

I won’t be giving away who was killed and by whom and how as that is half of the book’s magic and intrigue and you are better off reading it for yourself. 

    One thing I absolutely loved was that the book was not in chronological order. The book starts with our main resident, forever the sidekick, Oliver Marks, being released from jail. Except he’s innocent, he didn’t commit the murder, and the cop who put him in there finally wants to know the truth, completely and irrevocably. And on the day that Oliver is released from his ten years of second degree murder he gives in and begins the tragedy...or is it?

    The whole book you are kept suspended in midair, dangling with your breath just beneath you, never quite being able to get in a full lungful of oxygen. The exhilaration and thrill of trying to discover the real murderer amongst the seven, how Oliver, despite being innocent, was the one blamed or framed or otherwise punished, and who was killed and why, is what makes this book such an intrinsically deep read.

And the moment of clarity in which we swing back and forth in time between thirty-one-year-old Oliver telling Detective Colborne the truth is then offset by his first stage account of the melodrama that occurred as an active participant. 

    This book is riveting, the characters are dangerously mad and lovely, the fluctuation between the past and the present creates a delicious friction of clarity and backwards thinking, and the anticipation of trying to unravel the truth before it falls away from you is a chase that I haven't had in such a long time.

This book was fun, was relatable, was insanity, and was also, at the same time, beautiful. I loved the meta-cognition of what this book was to itself, the author, and the characters, and this self-awareness made it all the more brighter to me. 

Recommendation: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep; the more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite”

-Romeo and Juliet 

Score: 9/10