What Is a Campus Novel?
As summer begins to make way for fall, many are steeling themselves for the start of the new school year. Supplies have been bought, classes have been scheduled—a new year of learning is upon us.
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As a very post-grad, the end of summer always has me reminiscing about my college days: the bustle of the first day of classes, the short walk from my college house to campus, and feeling the seasons changing slowly, then suddenly. In the years since graduating, as a reader and writer I have felt myself drawn more and more to what is called the campus novel.
What Is a Campus Novel?
As the name suggests, a campus novel is a novel that takes place almost exclusively on a school campus, particularly but not necessarily that of a university.
The campus novel as we know it was popularized in the 1950s. Now, it’s a category of story that transcends genre for all types of writers and readers. Much like magical realism in that way, campus novels can and should be any genre—from literary to thriller, fantasy to romance, and more.
Because of the specific confines of the world-building within campus novels, they often explore themes surrounding educational and social hierarchies, those between professors and students, or students and students. The close corridors that a campus novel suggests allows for any degree of tension writers can build for their readers. To me, this is what makes campus novels so exciting to read and so diverse in genre.
With this in mind, here are some book recommendations of campus novels, with help from WD’s managing editor Moriah Richard, to add to your TBR pile, from classic to contemporary and spanning various genres.
10 Campus Novel Recommendations
Real Life by Brandon Taylor
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Almost everything about Wallace is at odds with the Midwestern university town where he is working uneasily toward a biochem degree. An introverted young man from Alabama, black and queer, he has left behind his family without escaping the long shadows of his childhood. For reasons of self-preservation, Wallace has enforced a wary distance even within his own circle of friends—some dating each other, some dating women, some feigning straightness. But over the course of a late-summer weekend, a series of confrontations with colleagues, and an unexpected encounter with an ostensibly straight, white classmate, conspire to fracture his defenses while exposing long-hidden currents of hostility and desire within their community.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
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Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.
Vladimir by Julia May Jonas
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“When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.”And so we are introduced to our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding.With this bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured debut, author Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and wildly entertaining, Vladimir perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.
Stoner by John Williams
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William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
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Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living.
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
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I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.Everyone loves Orion Lake. Everyone else, that is. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans.
I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts, I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world.
At least, that’s what the world expects. Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that’s crawled out of the drains. Sometimes I think they want me to turn into the evil witch they assume I am. The school certainly does.
But the Scholomance isn’t getting what it wants from me. And neither is Orion Lake. I may not be anyone’s idea of the shining hero, but I’m going to make it out of this place alive, and I’m not going to slaughter thousands to do it, either.
Although I’m giving serious consideration to just one.
The Year We Fell Down by Sarina Bowen
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She expected to start Harkness College as a varsity ice hockey player. But a serious accident means that Corey Callahan will start school in a wheelchair instead.
Across the hall, in the other handicapped-accessible dorm room, lives the too-delicious-to-be real Adam Hartley, another would-be hockey star with his leg broken in two places. He’s way out of Corey’s league. Also, he’s taken.
Nevertheless, an unlikely alliance blooms between Corey and Hartley in McHerrin Hall. Over perilously balanced dining hall trays, and video games, the two cope with disappointments that nobody else understands.
They’re just friends, of course, until one night when things fall apart. Or fall together. All Corey knows is that she’s falling. Hard.
But will Hartley set aside his trophy girl to love someone as broken as Corey? If he won’t, she will need to find the courage to make a life for herself at Harkness – one which does not revolve around the sport she can no longer play, or the brown-eyed boy who’s struggling with his own demons.
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
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On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars–on both sides of the Atlantic–serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith’s reputation as a major literary talent.
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
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The year is 1995, and email is new. Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, arrives for her freshman year at Harvard. She signs up for classes in subjects she has never heard of, befriends her charismatic and worldly Serbian classmate, Svetlana, and, almost by accident, begins corresponding with Ivan, an older mathematics student from Hungary. Selin may have barely spoken to Ivan, but with each email they exchange, the act of writing seems to take on new and increasingly mysterious meanings.
At the end of the school year, Ivan goes to Budapest for the summer, and Selin heads to the Hungarian countryside, to teach English in a program run by one of Ivan’s friends. On the way, she spends two weeks visiting Paris with Svetlana. Selin’s summer in Europe does not resonate with anything she has previously heard about the typical experiences of American college students, or indeed of any other kinds of people. For Selin, this is a journey further inside herself: a coming to grips with the ineffable and exhilarating confusion of first love, and with the growing consciousness that she is doomed to become a writer.
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
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Set at a boys’ boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.
Campus Novel Writing Prompt
Interested in this kind of storytelling? Let’s work together with a prompt. Place a character at the entrance to a college campus and have them walk down what you consider your main street. What do they see? How old is the campus? Why are they there? Are they on their way to register for classes? Are they late for their first class? Are they a transfer student from a different university? Freewrite for 30 minutes and see where your character takes you.
When you take this online writing course, you will learn how to create believable fiction characters and construct scenes with emotional depth and range. You’ll take an in-depth look at Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress who will give you character development techniques and tips along with practical advice for weaving emotion into scenes. Create characters readers will love and develop a strong point of view for your fiction book today!