Privilege is a morality tale for college students. In particular, for women, minorities, and the working class. There are three main characters, all young women associated with prestigious Carter University. Two are students, Annie and Bea. Annie, whose story is the backbone of the novel, has low self-confidence, and is at Carter on a full scholarship. She gets involved with a male student from a rich family. He is very kind to her and is disarmingly self-effacing, but he also sexually assaults her when she is passed out. She doesn’t know what to do about it at first, but comes to realize she must do something. As she starts to take action about it, she gets pushback from his family and the university administration. 

Bea is a woman of color, and she becomes involved in an improv team. She is also impressed by a professor who works for social justice, and is happy when he takes an interest in her. But then Bea finds that even people who work for social justice do not always act honorably.

Stayja is not a student, but works on campus at a cafe. Her family has many problems and she struggles to get out of her low pay job. She gets involved with Tyler, the student who assaulted Annie.

As Annie’s case against Tyler becomes more public, the three young women’s stories become entwined. We see how difficult it is for them to fight against power, and how the college, supposedly a place of justice, fundamentally serves its own interests, and those interests are to protect its reputation.

The audiobook is performed by 3 women and a man,  Caitlin Kelly, Adenrele Ojo, Sophie Amoss, and Graham Halstead. That helps to bring the characters alive. The performances are strong. It’s quite a long book, taking 11 hours to perform. It has virtues of showing the dark side of respectable colleges in the USA, and it sympathetically portrays the female characters. However, it takes effort to get through, with a looming sense of doom running through the story. There are some bright spots, but on the whole, the book is a gloomy tale.

Christian Perring is editor of Metapsychology. He lives in Suffolk County of Long Island, NY. He is Full Adjunct Professor at St John’s University, Vice President of AAPP and is an APPA

Categories: Fiction, AudioBooks

Keywords: fiction, audiobook