Book Review: "Trust Exercise" by Susan Choi

“Trust Exercise” by Susan Choi

Synopsis: In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Susan Choi's Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.—Macmillan

Rating (out of 5): 3.75

Review: I was thrilled to begin this, because when a literary novel gets a terrible rating on GoodReads, I’m sure I’m going to love it. I also love reading about teenagers, and the fact that they were at a performing arts high school was an additional selling point for me.

The first portion of the book focuses on the romance between David and Sarah, students in the acting program at CAPA, a performing arts high school in a major Southern city. Their teacher, Mr. Kingsley, is charismatic and forceful, openly gay and married (though not legally) to a man in the early 1980s. In the way of acting teachers, he meddles in the personal lives of his students. We see Sarah struggle through high school, using sex to numb herself from a difficult family life.

I’ve debated whether or not to reveal the first twist, and as many other reviewers have, I have decided for it. In the second part of the book, we discover that the first half is a novelization Sarah has written of her time in high school. The second section is narrated by a peripheral character in the first, who is eager to clear up what Sarah has omitted, changed, and elided over. This section’s voice is so totally different from the first that it added to how impressed I was with Choi’s writing.

The book finishes with a twist that rivals Atonement’s. I won’t reveal anything beyond that, however.

Choi’s writing is not the easiest, or the kind you can read quickly. For this reason, it takes a bit to become fully invested in the novel, but the payoff is worth becoming used to her style. A lot of the GoodReads criticism centered around the amount of sex the teens are having, and apparently these reviewers are just not remembering what high school was like, or maybe don’t understand that theatre students fit the “sexually active band geek” trope from Mean Girls.

This book zig zags and tests the reader’s loyalty to narrative in truly interesting ways. It deals with the vagaries of remember or misremembering our own pasts, and the stories we tell ourselves about what has happened to us.

Tl;DR: A truly compelling story that isn’t the easiest read. Absolutely worth the effort to get through it.

If you liked this, try:

• “Crossing California” by Adam Langer

• “Marlena” by Julie Buntin

• “Dare Me” by Megan Abbott

• “You Will Know Me” by Megan Abbott

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