Trust Exercise

One sentence synopsis... Written in three parts (with each new part upending the “reality” of the former) this experimental novel examines forms of trust - between students and teachers, lovers, parents and children, but especially the delicate trust required for readers to suspend their disbelief and let an author take them through a story. .

Read it if you like... the first part of this book is reminiscent of a poor man's Sally Rooney (which we later realize has been written poorly on purpose) but the twist is for fans of books that make the readers a participant in the story (think ‘Ship of Theseus' by JJ Abrams). .

Dream casting... I pictured Peter Gallagher as the charismatic theatre teacher Mr. Kingsley/Robert Lord (apologies to Sandy Cohen).

I never ever ever ever would have finished this book if it weren't for book club, because I hated (hated!) (HATED!) Part 1 of the book. Part 2 rocked and actually actively made up for Part 1. This is literally exactly the type of book that a lot of normal people hate but that wins literary awards and gets glowing reviews calling it audacious and spellbinding, etc., but don't let that stop you from giving it a shot.

It's been some days since I finished this book and I still keep discovering new ways in which it is meta.

The narrative about-face in the second part of the book is a neat trick, of the sort that makes you want to immediately reread the story, this time questioning everything.

I really appreciated the style too - it seemed like the author wasn't trying very hard, and only towards the end when they identity of the narrator is once again thrown into question did this make all the more sense to me.

I've seen this called an experimental novel. It starts out as a story about a group of teenagers at a performing arts high school in an unnamed southern American city, their relationships, and their charismatic but shady teacher, Mr. Kingsley. Midway through, the story shifts dramatically, bringing some of the same characters into adulthood, but also bringing many of your initial assumptions into question and introducing (for me, anyway) a strong element of scepticism. Once the attitude of scepticism is invoked, it persists through the third part, even though the story told in the third part seems to corroborate what we learned in the second part. If that makes sense.

In the high school section of the novel, the students are asked to perform “trust exercises” with each other: falling backwards into a crowd of their fellow students, crawling around in the dark and identifying each other by feel (!!), etc. They also perform “mirroring” exercises, where one person says a “you” statement to another, and the second student repeats the statement as an “I” statement, using tone and inflection to change the meaning of the statement each time. These exercises result in changes of relationship between the students, but they also reappear later in the story as themes. Trustworthiness, the ability (or failure) to communicate effectively, the (lack of) ability to hear or interpret what someone is saying, and self absorption are all themes in the novel.

Each section of the novel is readable, even if you don't particularly like any of the characters. There's a lot of cringeworthy sex, but you understand that it is cringeworthy for a reason. The transitions between sections are abrupt and therefore jarring–there just isn't any continuity to smooth them out. Having finished the novel, I can contemplate the whole and feel satisfied that it IS a complete whole, although it felt disjointed while I was in the process.

I have yet to hide an entire review due to spoilers, but I felt I had to do so for this book. This novel is unlike anything I've ever read, and while I loved parts of it, I absolutely hated others. The first half of the book tells the story of Sarah and David, two high schoolers who couple and decouple amidst the sometimes crazy circumstances of their lives, including their cultish school for the arts. At page 131, the perspective changes, and it is revealed that the preceding pages were an excerpt from a quasi-autobiographical novel written by the “Sarah” character. This was an interesting twist, and I initially enjoyed this next section of the novel, which is written from the perspective of one of the minor characters from the first part. Unfortunately, this portion of the book climaxes with the narrator, “Karen,” shooting a man 14 years her senior with whom she had a relationship as a child. While I would normally applaud such an action, “Karen” went about this by switching a prop gun in a play for a real gun, which is probably the laziest writing I have ever read, and is the sole reason I am giving this book three stars instead of five. The last section of the book was very good; it deepened the mystery and made the whole thing worth reading. Overall, I would recommend this novel.

Listened to ~10% but will abandon this now, as the narration feels too detached and doesn't get me invested in the characters.

I devoured this book on a cross-country flight and was blown away with how it takes the reader for a ride. There are many narrative twists that I don't want to risk spoiling, but it is to be read in its entirety to be understood. I found myself recalling a lot of my time from high school - the maturity I thought I had to deal with the too mature situations I found myself in. I can see how people feel frustrated by the unreliable narrator, but I appreciate a book that doesn't just hand over all the answers. If you like Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, you'd love this book too.

I was on board for the first part of the book. Sarah and David perfectly capture the drama of highschool romance. For David love is a declaration requiring a grand gesture, but Sarah instinctively recoils at the PDA and hurts David. It just spirals from there, things escalating in their minds. Add to that the fact of them being drama nerds and its becomes altogether extra. I wanted more of this (and I'd get it shortly with Sarah Rooney's Normal People) but then Susan Choi switches gears. It's not about those two at all, she's got bigger fish to fry and that's where she lost me.

The shift in perspective wrong-footed me and suddenly I'm thrown out of the story and trying to align the pieces in my head. I've moved beyond unreliable narrator into meta unreliability and teetering at the edge of why should I care at all. And considering some of themes she's exploring that's a dangerous sentiment to hold. Some wild coincidence, another shift, and a weak stumble to the end and it just feels I've just never made the necessary connections that would reveal Susan Choi's grand design.

There are many ways in which I didn't like this novel. Before ever getting to the different sections and the supposed meta deconstruction of fiction or memory or whatever. I cringed many times after poorly constructed sentences and overused phrases. The story of the first section was compelling enough, though there wasn't a character to like. When we learn in the second section that the first was just fiction, maybe I could say that the poor writing in the first was a construction of the novel itself. But the second section was just as bad, using again some of the poor phrasing as the first. And if this twist of the second section was supposed to be mind blowing, it wasn't. The narrator of this section is more annoying than the first, but by now I'm reading only to get through. When that section ends in an implausible “shocking” ending, and we're given a third section that makes us doubt the veracity of even the second section, I could care less.

Maybe I can appreciate the exercise here, but a novel with these aims could have more carefully construction, with the doubt woven throughout, with language less cringy, and a plot that is compelling and not built upon shocking the reader.

This was an incredibly challenging yet satisfying read. The writing is spectacular, but I could see the indirect form of storytelling turning off a lot of casual readers (which I generally consider myself).

To me, it was a commentary on the complexities of truth, and how what's true to one person can mean something completely different to another. But the beauty in this book is that 10 different readers could have 10 completely different interpretations of its meaning, and none of them would be right or wrong.

At times it was work to get through. In the words of a friend, “Susan Choi is not going to hold your hand.” But she left me with a story I'll be thinking about for quite some time.

This is tough review. I know people loved this book but I just didn't. I wanted to... but I had trouble connecting to the story. I just didn't care. I was also waiting for some big reveal, and it never came and I really blame the press around this book. I think I read a blurb that said it would change the way you saw fiction or that it totally left the reader blown away.
Well, not me. I was unimpressed. Could have been my mood. Could have been that it couldn't live up to the hype. It could have been that I read it during the holidays and was too busy to focus on it. Maybe it's because I grew up in the same time period and am completely unimpressed by the idea of teenagers running around without adult supervision.
It is what it is.

I listened to the audiobook (for time's sake— had to finish it in a short amount of time for a book club meeting). So fair warning in case some people have varying opinions depending on what medium they consumed the story in.

I find that there are a lot of unanswered questions, which I suppose is kind of the point of the book. It's impossible to go through life (especially adolescence) with all the answers. Martin's play didn't even have all the answers as to whether the male and female characters were related or lovers.

I would've liked to learn more about Sarah's pregnancy. I enjoyed the book most when it was from her point of view. But I think pregnancy was an interesting way to connect Sarah to Karen, and then to show us even more about them through Karen's daughter.

Overall, I did enjoy listening to this book, and it kept my attention, but it isn't something that I'll be thinking about for days and weeks to come.

This book is Scorpio lightning-electro-shock therapy administered underwater. I felt like I was immersed in a play about a past life only my body remembered. The themes of friendship gone awry, vague sexual boundaries, and adulthood plagued by the traumas of adolescence will resonate with most, but the author keeps you on the edge of your seat with changes in narration and perspective. I recommend the audiobook version for the expert acting and increased drama.

Thick read and unexpectedly raunchy from first passages.  Felt a bit like something needed to happen after all of the character building, otherwise just a graphic teenage puppy love story with pretty cliché of a ‘development' later in the book.  Had all of the tropes and story beats of a cookie cutter high school romance story and never really became clear what the plot/moral/point of novel is.  It even got a bit boring and confusing at times with the writer's style, as it was a struggle to figure out what's happening underneath all of the prose that came off like waffling filler.  This made it almost purposely vague at times where it became hard to understand what was actually being said or happening.

I found it very difficult to engage with this story at the beginning. Since it was an audiobook, I kept rewinding to listen to parts over and over. If I had read the book, I probably would have just put it aside after a while, and possibly not finished.
I did finish the audiobook, but I had to renew my rental multiple times. I didn't really like it. I want a book to tell a story, not a bunch of random information that I need to use to try to write my own story in my head. It just wasn't for me.