Blame Sally Rooney. In the years since the Irish author’s debut, Conversations with Friends, there has been nothing a young writer likes more than to write about beautiful, disaffected twentysomethings drowning in directionless ennui. They do not need quote marks for speech or much of a plotline. Heck, maybe they don’t even need character development. That’s nihilist praxis, baby!
Combine that with the current fixation with campus novels – Sydney’s Diana Reid is the local poster girl for this hybrid – and you have Higher Education, the first novel from Western Australian-born, London-based writer Kira McPherson.
