Trust Exercise is yet another book I checked out from the CPL after hearing about it on the NY Times Book Review podcast. There was also a promotional spot for it that played at the beginning or middle of various podcasts, for about a month or so. That promotional blurb communicated something to the effect of, "a single incident told from multiple perspectives, examining the nature of truth, and how we frame it." That is about close enough, and when I casually mentioned to a friend that I was reading it, they said DO NOT READ ANYTHING ABOUT IT ONLINE, which piqued my interest a bit more, though I was around page 30 at the time and not feeling especially excited for the rest. Owing to this friend's warning, I would hate to spoil it for others, and so as we did with another great book compromised by an absurd conclusion, we will append this review with a spoiler discussion after the asterisks.
As such it may be difficult to review this book, for even describing its structure is to spoil it, and ruin the experience of having this story peel back, layer by layer, slowly as intended. I will only *hint* that there is a Pale Fire element to it, a Bret Easton Ellis vibe to some of it, and further "formless" books without chapters (and there are not very many asterisks here, either--just an extra line in paragraph breaks, to mark stopping points).
It is not a spoiler to introduce the cast of characters or its plot. Briefly, Sarah is the main character, and the story is set sometime in the late 1980's, I think, or perhaps earlier. Even with that sentence, I have unfortunately spoiled something, as this may come as a surprise to readers. That is, I thought it took place in the present-day, despite the absence of phones or texting, and it was only when one character was revealed to later appear in an Aerosmith video for "Love in an Elevator," that I realized this went further back. Perhaps it is the early 1980's, I'm not sure.
It is a High School Novel. Sarah attends CAPA, which is a school for the performing arts, I think somewhere in Atlanta, or nearby. There she meets David, their freshman year, and the story concerns the summer between that freshman and sophomore year, and then sophomore year (briefly) and then the "event," which is an exchange program with students from London coming into town for a theater production of Candide. David is her love interest, and they are both very engaged in theater, and there are a number of other smaller supporting characters, Joelle, amongst them, who was Sarah's best friend, but who has been abandoned after the summer. CAPA's theater program is very prestigious and is anchored by Mr. Kingsley, who is a guru known for untraditional techniques, such as trust exercises, and repetition tests.
It should be said that, while I found the beginning of this novel rather tedious, it did do something special for me. That is, sometimes novels can appear as if they are speaking directly to us, describing experiences we had personally. This may be a cliched plot, or overused tropes in high school ephemera (i.e. the cliques of jocks, nerds, stoners, theater kids), but though this was not a boarding school, this book cut me deep. (It is perhaps also worth noting that tonight is my 20th high school reunion, via Zoom, and this book may have taken me back to the past in another way.)
Mainly this is because we had a theater director not unlike Mr. Kingsley who also, on our first day orientation as freshmen, had us all lie down on our backs in a dark room, listening to the sounds of his footsteps as he instructed us to imagine an "ooze" of sorts, making its way from the crown of our head to the tips of our toes, and to feel a sense of calm and rejuvenation, seeing the world a different way, when we came out of it. We also had Eton Academy (I think, or perhaps a 2nd tier prestigious English boarding school avatar--I don't recall talk of Prince William) travel to perform Twelfth Night at our school (we had performed it the previous semester, if memory serves). There also was a radical stage performance, cancelled after dress rehearsal due to sexually dangerous overtones. All of these were part of my own experience. So too, did I imagine the sort of romance that Sarah and David share over the summer--they are young, they have their lives stretched before them, summer seems endless in the best possible way, they go about their lives and they find each other, riding bikes and doing teenage things but also experimenting and becoming "more experienced" than their peers, late into the night, until going home to their parents. This was part of my experience, but in fantasy alone. (Also they perform Guys and Dolls and our school performed that in 8th grade, which felt eerily familiar.)
There is a long party scene towards the end of the first "chapter" and this reminded me of Less Than Zero, or else my own earlier work, where party scenes were heavily workshopped (I was not alone in this). Some of this felt blindingly dumb. It felt like when I try to write a Shitty First Draft and I become ridiculously descriptive and tedious, or branch off in random directions without any sense of story, or not knowing what the story is, perhaps for how characters move through space and complete tasks:
"In the shower she turned the water by increments from very warm to very hot until she thought her skin would burn, and felt the microscopic Liam--where he had floundered his chest against her leaving streaks of hot sweat, where he had tongued his spittle through the grooves of her ear and down the cords of her neck, where had greased her with his fingers and stuffed her with what she'd hoped to forget he referred to as 'spunk,' another nursery word connoting sickly stench, unlaundered linen, hidden stains, and shame--scoured and rinsed away like so many hairy little organisms from a cleanser commercial, protestingly sucked down the drain. No part of her body did not crave the annihilation of hot water and soap. She found the body wash, but didn't want to use the crinkly pouf that went with it and was obviously often used by Elli and seemed too personal, so in the end she poured the body wash into the cup of her hand and tried to get it over as much of herself as she could. She washed her hair twice, clawing hard at her scalp. Then it seemed she might have been in the shower too long." (128-129)
This is like if I try to describe a character's workout routine, all the different machines and weights they use in the gym, in the interest of fleshing out detail, because every little element is a window into the character's psyche. Or not. As may be apparent, there is a lot of flowery prose that stops just short of turning purple, almost a certain grandiloquence in its run-on quality.
There are paragraphs like these, and then there are these exchanges, which take up a good 10 pages of the novel:
"'Your eyes are blue,' Sarah says, perhaps the least observant observation she could make. Almost hostile in its insipidity.
'My eyes are blue,' says David, with such perfect neutrality he cannot be charged with indifference. He might have said, 'One two three four,' or hummed notes. No: humming, by the nature of the song, would be far more expressive.
'Your eyes are blue.' She's learned if she stares straight at him he goes foreign to her and she no longer sees him, yet Mr. Kingsley cannot accuse her of avoiding eye contact.
'My eyes are blue.' Perhaps David's doing the same, staring at her so that, like the sun, she blinds him.
'Your eyes are blue.'
'My eyes are blue.'
'Your eyes are blue.'
It's been weeks of the same. A punishment everyone shares, for neither of them will give up an inch, not a flush nor a flinch nor above all a tear. It exalts Sarah almost, this death of her heart, this drought of her tears. Perhaps she is actually getting somewhere: at least, she's learned something from David. An utterly passive, compliant resistance. In the beginning, their rigid impasse fascinated their classmates. Now, it's a purgatory. Their classmates hate watching them even more than they hate sitting there. They never fulfill the objective. They never win praise. They are never allowed to advance. Unlike everyone else, they're exclusively paired with each other.
'My eyes are blue.'
'Your eyes are blue.'
'My eyes are blue.'
'Stop,' Mr. Kingsley barks, flicking a hand in disgust. They are both now persona non grata. In unconscious tandem they stand up, turn away from each other." (62-63)
As this was relatively early in the novel, I feared this kind of "word padding" would go on for the remainder. Thankfully this was not so, but it gave the impression of a debut novel that is rather limited in its scope, and delves into the psyches of its characters with no real deeper understanding of them.
The novel does get better as it goes along. So that is the first bit of advice I have: I don't think this experience of feeling bored is mine alone, and if you feel like quitting, keep going. I am not sure if this is a particularly rewarding novel, but ultimately it concerns itself with memory and art, and dealing with the thorny inevitability of the so-called "thinly-veiled autobiographical debut novel." Susan Choi does thank her school, "emphatically the right-side-up to my fictional upside-down CAPA, and a place of dreams, not nightmares," in the acknowledgements, and one wonders how much she pulled from that experience.
This does take the prototypical High School Novel in a different direction. The beginning could almost be considered YA Fiction, but by the end it is something differently entirely. I'm sorry for playing so coy but I am trying to protect you and your reading experience.
***
Now then, if you are one of the many people that asks for it to be spoiled, because you aren't going to read it anyways, this novel is broken up into three parts. Each of the parts is titled "Trust Exercise." In this sense, it reminded me of Asymmetry, the tri-partite structure, with seemingly unconnected narratives that gradually dawn on the reader as parts of the same whole. However, this is a bit more obvious in part two. Part three is nearly perfect.
Part 2 concerns Karen, who is an incidental figure in Part 1, which is revealed to be Sarah's debut novel, who is showing up at Skylight Books (a real place!) to shock Sarah and call her out for writing a novel that brushes all the unpleasantness under the carpet and that reframes the unpleasantness they experienced in an offensive way, for Karen. Names and sexual orientations have been changed, and teenage melodrama has replaced highly questionable conduct on the parts of people in positions of power, i.e. Martin. In Part 1, Sarah gets into a car with Martin and Liam (who are the older director and lead actor traveling from England, along with the regular high-schoolers), who then pick up Karen from TCBY, and then go to the big party that serves as the climax.
Karen is Joelle, and also not Karen, who is portrayed as more of an incidental acquaintance, rather than a best friend. To the point that they travel to England together to see Liam and Martin, their respective older boyfriends, and Karen realizes that Martin never really cared about her like he pretended to, and then there is this part which made me feel kind of confused until I realized what was happening (i.e. the "Hills Like White Elephants" effect):
"Her father was waiting in the airport for her with his belly buttoned into his work shirt and his big hairy hands gripping each other in front of his crotch. Elli sometimes called Karen's father 'a fucking hick' with great scorn but Karen's father had command of the resources. That first night he said nothing to her, just let her sleep in the small, sad room that was always reserved for her and Kevin's rare visits and that wasn't decorated with anything but their school portraits, every single year but one (Kevin first grade/Karen third grade--Elli had forgotten to order the packets), framed and lined up on the wall. Paneling on the walls and shag on the floor Karen's father had nailed up and tacked down himself. Military-style bedsheets Karen almost couldn't wedge herself into, they were tucked on the mattress so tight. Then their strong detergent smell gave her a headache and kept her awake. This kind of thing had never bothered her before. The next day, the trip to the doctor. Back home again Karen's father tanned her bare butt with his belt the way he'd done when she and Kevin were very little, before the divorce. All of this had been expected and hoped for. Karen's father let her get back in bed afterward, brought a folding chair in and sat on it, watching his knuckles until Karen stopped crying. Eventually he said, 'Who's the guy?' (215)
I almost don't want to spoil Part 3, but I will just say that, for me, it was a special experience, because it gradually dawned on me what was happening, and who these new characters were, and the actual nature of the "incident" (though that is still confusing for me).
Because yes we learn that Martin and Karen's relationship was more predatory than December-May, and so Karen now lives in the same town as David, where they grew up, and Mr. Kingsley still teaches at CAPA, and Martin has recently been "cancelled" from his school, leaving in disgrace, and there is room for doubt as to the nature of his behavior, and so David champions him, believes in him, and stages a play that Martin has written and will star in, and they need one female for the one female part, and it ends up being Karen, her first acting role in ages (she was often in charge of wardrobe backstage, with Sarah) and Sarah comes in to do the dress change as a special occasion. Sarah finds out she is pregnant, and there is an awkward moment where Karen mentions that she was, once, and....look Part 2 in general is not that great either. It's definitely a step up from Part 1, because it makes the reader completely rethink the narrative, and "the real narrative" feels more important or meaningful. My issue is that sometimes the writing slips into devices--i.e. Karen is mentally unstable--and I will say, the ending of Part 2 may or may not be a homage to The Art of Fielding, in that I don't believe it was the right way to go. I think it's going for shock value. And I think that may even be the point, that Part 2 is also "fiction," or at least stylized non-fiction, with a couple key changes, perhaps a fantasy based in regret for not doing what she should have done. However, it's probably just real, and so I can play the cynical critic and say that it garbles whatever "lesson" should be imparted. It is to its credit, however, that "mentally unstable Karen," mines the divide between victim-blaming and the murkier realities of decisions made in the moment when teenagers believe themselves to have agency, and only later realize they did not:
"But this was love, a crazy clamor to receive recognition. Did it matter that the person who unleashed Karen's floodgates was much older--even older than she knew? [40, btw] Did it matter that he was a liar? Did it matter that he had practice, and she had none? Did it matter that after he opened Karen's floodgates Karen's 'lake, river, reservoir, etc.' never refilled, to stick with the floodgates metaphor? Karen has thought about this, believe her. She knows she's not a special kind of victim, for having gotten shown the ropes by a much older man who, it turned out, did not care about her. She knows this is perfectly common; just look at all the stories/plays/movies about it. She wanted him. In her ignorance and inexperience she thought he was handsome, worldly, earnest, and reliable, and now, with her knowledge and experience, she can see that he was ugly, provincial, duplicitous, and untrustworthy; even cruel. The fact remains that she wanted him. Her wanting him means that she chose. She doesn't have a case here, she's fully aware; this would be why she's kept her mouth shut and kept her problem to herself. Martin's 'witch hunt' is made up of women who insist they have a case, but what's different about them, exactly? Karen's attitude toward them is violently mixed. She might defend them to David, but in her bowels she scorns them, these young women who made a bad judgment and now want to blame someone else." (205-206)
Perhaps this is because she feels that she has experienced something more shattering than any of the other accusers. The real tragedy of sexual abuse is the effect upon the victim, for the rest of their life. Many may go on to lead relatively conventional lives, and find some way to cabin the trauma they have experienced, to the point that it does not control their life. For Karen, who has not really been in a serious relationship or been in any sort of place to have another child, it's like her life ended, and what came after is making peace with the idea that she is irrevocably broken, to the point that she requires vengeance. In a certain sense, this is a fantasy chapter.
And that really is the magic trick that is this book. We know that Part 1 is Fiction, but is Part 2 Fiction, and what of Part 3? It seems obvious that Part 3 is the true reality--we know Mr. Kingsley is not gay, and that he has predated on students such that he will be cancelled, after Martin was cancelled, but Mr. Kingsley is still Mr. Kingsley in Part 2. Perhaps then, the author of Part 3 is also the author of Part 2, or perhaps Part 2 is a novel written by Karen (complete with shock ending). None of this is clear or meant to be, and Trust Exercise may be one of those rare books that people will start again after finishing. I did not have the patience to do this as I must move forward with this project, but because of this, it is the perfect selection for a book club. Moreover, it is instructional for writers, in terms of deciphering those things in life that we deem meaningful enough for fiction. It offers thoughts on protecting incidental figures in vaguely autobiographical books, but I would not trust any of it. Some people want their story white-washed, and some people want their story exactly as it occurred, as by an objective journalist. Writing about trauma is a good way to begin the healing process and I would imagine this book will mean a lot to any readers that have been subject to this particular type of abuse, or premature sexual experience. My friend said this was probably the best book they read all year. And while I do not believe it rises to the level of Sontag or belongs on the Best Book list, I would have to concur that it is the best work of fiction I have read this year--so far!
Grade: A-
