“Trust Exercise” by Susan Choi

This book has been on my reading list long enough that I started it and was surprised at my choice. The plot gets turned on its head though halfway through, and again just before the end. Then I realized why I was so interested in it.

The book starts with a story about teenagers Sarah and David who are both in the theatre program at a performing arts high school. They start off in love but then drift apart. Sarah can’t figure out why and is constantly orbiting David trying to get his attention again. They end up hosting a theatre troupe from England as well, and Sarah starts a thing with their unattractive star Liam.

The narrative abruptly stops at page 131, which is revealed to be as far into a book that “Karen” gets. “Karen” is the pseudonym for a classmate of Sarah’s, who is now an adult and reading Sarah’s fictionalized version of their high school experience. She stops at that point as it becomes clear that she isn’t going to be fully portrayed in the story. Karen keeps the use of the pseudonyms to be consistent, but she talks about how she swapped to dance and left town, but then ended up coming back and befriending David in the process. David is also in their hometown and directing theatre there, he wants to put on a play written by Martin, the director of the English troupe that was in town when they were students. Karen was implied to be in a relationship with Martin, and she manages to get cast in the play. She also goes to meet Sarah on her book tour and convinces Sarah to be her backstage dresser for the show. Having done all this, she was supposed to shoot a blank out of a gun backstage with Martin so that there’d be a gunshot for the play. Opening night though, she shoots him in the crotch. Her narration reveals that he got her pregnant before leaving town and she gave up the baby for adoption.

The final chapter is from the point of view of her daughter. Real names are now used so it’s hard to be sure who anyone is at first. But she goes to the school to try and figure out who her mother was. She talks to their teacher, and the chapter opens with her attending a memorial for his life. In a flashback she talks about how she went to his house to try and get information from him and he sexually assaulted her. She never figures out her mother’s name.

The twist halfway through was by far the most interesting part of the book, because it allows the focus to go from these teenagers to the unreliable narrator that we’ve been hearing from this whole time. There’s such a long amount of time dedicated to Sarah and David in the beginning, you really have to slog through all of that before it gets interesting. Many of the details are woven into there, such as the characters that Karen gets chopped into, but the author really makes you work here. Post changeover, with the change in focus to Karen it really sets things on their head. You start off rooting for Sarah, but Karen has very little patience for Sarah the author. She’s even downright unkind at times. But you start to piece together what’s been changed and what’s been even deliberately left out.

I found the ending also really striking. You never figure out Karen’s real name as she just goes by “Karen” and her daughter never gets that information from her failed trip to the school. It says a lot about sexual assault cases, especially with teens, that the victim is never named but the villain has articles and papers written about him as he gets accused. Not to mention that the two main father figures both turn out to be sexually assaulting students. There aren’t any major female adults, just those two male ones, so definitely a pattern going on there. It speaks to the power that adults have other these teens that are trying to prove themselves as artists and as individuals. And that the power is so long lasting that it transcends generations with it impacting Karen’s daughter as well.

I really enjoyed this book, and I think I even had a better experience going in a little blind. I really had to commit to that first section and then got so excited when it got interesting. My favorite kind of books are the ones that make you think about the medium, so I’m really glad I found this one.