Trust Exercise
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3.0 • 9 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR
Both inventive and shocking, Trust Exercise became a sensation on publication in the USA for its timely insights into sex, power and the nature of abuse.
Sarah and David are in love - the obsessive, uncertain love of teenagers on the edge of adulthood. At their performing arts school, the rules are made by their magnetic drama instructor Mr Kingsley, who initiates them into a dangerous game. Two decades on we learn that the real story of these teenagers' lives is even larger and darker than we imagined, and the consequences have lasted a lifetime.
Trust Exercise is a brilliant, unforgettable novel about what we lose, gain and never get over as we're initiated into the mysteries of adulthood.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Choi's superb, powerful fifth novel, after 2013's My Education, marries exquisite craft with topical urgency. Set in the early 1980s, the book's first section depicts the Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts, an elite high school in an unnamed Southern city. Galvanized by the charged atmosphere created by the school's magnetic theater teacher, Mr. Kingsley, 15-year-old classmates Sarah and David have an intense sexual relationship the summer between their freshman and sophomore years. Sarah, who has taken its secrecy for granted, is horrified when David makes their romance public that fall. She repudiates him, the two spend the year estranged, and she grows increasingly isolated until an English theater troupe makes an extended visit to the school. When she is pursued by one of the troupe's actors at the same time her classmate Karen falls in love with its director, the two young women form a fraught, ambivalent bond. The novel's second segment reintroduces the characters a dozen years later, shifting from Sarah's perspective into to a new viewpoint that casts most of what readers thought they knew into doubt. After the tensions of the past culminate in an act at once shocking and inevitable, a brief coda set in 2013 adds a final bold twist. Choi's themes among them the long reverberations of adolescent experience, the complexities of consent and coercion, and the inherent unreliability of narratives are timeless and resonant. Fiercely intelligent, impeccably written, and observed with searing insight, this novel is destined to be a classic.
Customer Reviews
Trust deficit
3.5 stars
Author
Born in South Bend, Indiana (long before Pete Buttigieg was elected mayor) to Korean mother and Jewish father. Studied literature at Yale and writing at Cornell. Worked for as a fact-checker for The New Yorker an coedited an anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories (what else) with the editor David Remnick. Now lives in Brooklyn (yawn). Her non-fiction appears in the expected places. Multiple awards and nominations, including the Pulitzer. This, her fifth novel, won the National Book Award for fiction in 2019.
Plot
It’s the 1980’s in an unnamed US city that’s almost certainly Houston. A whirlwind teen romance (Sarah and David) occurs at a performing arts high school, which has the mandatory inspirational, but unconventional, teacher. Consequences follow. Sarah tells us like it is, except she doesn’t, as we learn after a Gone Girl style switch of narrator midway through combined with a decade-plus time shift. Stuff happens.
Narrative
Sequential first person: Sarah and Karen (is that really her name?)
Characters
The kids are well drawn if not easily relatable to me. The all boys high school I attended was more of a performing farts kind of place. The adults ditto. Self absorption prevails throughout.
Prose
Language and imagery aplenty. (2.5 stars worth).
Bottom line
TCFM (too clever for me). Ms Choi is a talented writer. I enjoyed the prose. The plot and the characters, not so much.