âThe Secret History meets The Price of Saltâ (Vogue) in this âequal parts dangerous and deliciousâ (Entertainment Weekly) novel about queer desire, religious zealotry, and the hunger for transcendence among the members of a cultic chapel choir at a Maine boarding schoolâand the ambitious, terrifyingly charismatic girl that rules over them.
When shy, sensitive Laura Stearns arrives at St. Dunstanâs Academy in Maine, she dreams that life there will echo her favorite novel, All Before Them, the sole surviving piece of writing by Byronic âprep school prophetâ (and St. Dunstanâs alum) Sebastian Webster, who died at nineteen, fighting in the Spanish Civil War. She soon finds the intensity she is looking for among the insular, Webster-worshipping members of the schoolâs chapel choir, which is presided over by the charismatic, neurotic, overachiever Virginia Strauss. Virginia is as fanatical about her newfound Christian faith as she is about the miles she runs every morning before dawn. She expects nothing short of perfection from herselfâand from the member of the choir.
Virginia inducts the besotted Laura into a world of transcendent music and arcane ritual, illicit cliff-diving and midnight crypt visits: a world that, like Websterâs novels, finally seems to Laura to be full of meaning. But when a new school chaplain challenges Virginiaâs hold on the âfamilyâ she has created, and Virginiaâs efforts to wield her power become increasingly dangerous, Laura must decide how far she will let her devotion to Virginia go.
The World Cannot Give is a âhypnotic and intenseâ (Shondaland) meditation on the power, and danger, of wanting more from the world.