Trust Exercise by Susan Choi Of the many intriguing ways Choi plays with voice, perspective and nomenclature, Karen’s section is the most striking. All contents © 2021 The Slate Group LLC. “We were taught that a moment of intimacy had no meaning unless it was part of a show,” Karen observes of her years studying under Mr. Kingsley. What choice is there but to fall into her version of what happened? Karen is furious. Are Mr. Kingsley and Martin the same person, both Robert Lord? If they are, then we can "trust" virtually nothing in Trust Exercise. [The ending struck me as peculiarly unsatisfying. She can articulate the significance of the name Sarah has given the character based on her to a point so sharp, it’s lethal: “ ‘Karen’ is a yearbook name, filler, a girl with a hairstyle like everyone else’s and a face you’ve forgotten.” Yet such is her old, bitter obsession with Sarah that she also can’t shake off the fictional identity her onetime friend has imposed on her: “My name isn’t and never was Karen, but I’ll be Karen.” Karen presents herself to the reader as an avenging angel on behalf of the truth, armed to the teeth with weaponized, therapy-derived insight. Ask the Author. Perhaps this is because “Trust Exercise” is a densely imagined high school novel and, like most of her central characters, I graduated from high school in the early 1980s. But then their sophomore year starts, there’s the near-obligatory scene in which Sarah suddenly realizes that she no longer has anything in common with the girl who was once her best friend, and somehow her romance with David goes off the rails. Not so fast, the novel’s second part commands. All rights reserved. That immortal figure rises up at the center of Susan Choi’s “Trust Exercise,” the latest of her startling novels about academic life. He seems to have molested, or groomed, David, Manuel, Sarah, and Karen, and no doubt scores of other. Sex, both ambient and explicit (“the hot slippery fit is accomplished”), is the blossoming of all these entanglements, the point of things, their essence, the truth. NOTE: The Book Spoiler is always looking for a nice little synopsis (including the ending) of any current … She knows well that the simplest story based on real lives is full of traps and misdirection. At … Later, of course, after Mr. Lord has creeped on her and she has escaped, and after his huge funeral, she realizes what the secretary had meant (she knows who Claire's mom is), but finds it too awkward to go back. You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. She is more truthful than Sarah, perhaps, but not nearly as forthright as she claims to be. But my read was that Claire is Karen and Martin's daughter, to whom Karen gave birth in the Christian anti-abortion school. Here is where Trust Exercise busts out of its coming-of-age shell and becomes a stranger and far more marvelous creature. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99. Spoiler-ish as this summary may sound, it seems a necessary spur to get readers unfamiliar with Choi’s work through the novel’s unexceptional first lap. The novel opens in 1982. But Karen knows what really happened. Trust Exercise is published by Serpent’s Tail (£14.99). Trust Exercise is going to be a hard book to review without spoilers (but I shall attempt). Susan Choi is a masterful novelist, who understands exactly where we are right now and how we got here. She makes scathing observations about what she calls “the Elite Brotherhood of the Arts,” an informal authoritative body made up of men like Mr. Kingsley and the adult David, now a director of highbrow productions back home. The problem, or perhaps the theme, of Trust Exercise seems to be that no one can know what happened because we're all locked into our own points of view, our own "Truths," our own spin. Spoiler-ish as this summary may sound, it seems a necessary spur to get readers unfamiliar with Choi’s work through the novel’s unexceptional first lap. At Trust’s midpoint, the plot flashes forward, forcing us to think backward; a minor player emerges as our narrator, who calls into question much of the story as it’d previously been told. Karen plans to tell the reader, but she’s going to take her time. Thank's for the clarification...I'd figured out most of it, except who Robert Lord was. Trust Exercise by Susan Choi Published by Henry Holt & Company Publication date: April 9, 2019 Susan Choi’s new novel, Trust Exercise is a polarizing book, with Goodreads reviews divided between 1 star and 5. *WARNING* - The ending to these books will be revealed! Trust Exercise never really guarantees that it has given you an ending at all. Sarah and David are sophomores at an elite performing arts high school. Choi deliberately leaves us with nothing but loose ends, the loosest of all being Claire, who her real parents are, and what became of her mother. [I didn't find this as complicated as the other answerers. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. We first meet Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman)as they attempt to conceive a child. But it is also an exercise in how difficult it is to tell the story of one’s own abuse. Now she recognizes that the exercises he made them do “were a kind of pornography,” a way of feeding on the energy of their youth. Did I get obsessed with it? Photo by twinsterphoto/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Heather Weston. If you think Martin and Mr. Kingsley were the same person then the ending where Claire is sexually abused by Robert Lord who is supposedly Mr. Kingsle. Like the Count of Monte Cristo, Karen has a plan, and her purpose, like the count’s, is revenge. Whether you just saw Gone Girl for the first time or you still don't quite understand the ending after dozens of rewatches, we're here to help. If you think Martin and Mr. Kingsley were the same person then the ending where Claire is sexually abused by Robert Lord who is supposedly Mr. Kingsley makes it even more awful. . Karen divebombs Trust Exercise much as the fiendish Amy Dunne crashes into Gone Girl, laying waste to the fake, conventional narrative she’s constructed to punish her cheating husband. Trust Exercise Susan Choi, 2019 Henry Holt & Company 272 pp. Slate has relationships with various online retailers. trust exercise by Susan Choi ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019 What begins as the story of obsessive first love between drama students at a competitive performing arts high school in the early 1980s twists into something much darker in Choi’s singular new novel. Yes. Trust Exercise as a title is referencing the drama exercises in the first act, but it also makes me think of how we as a society trust authority figures and organizations to treat our youth well, how sometimes this trust is unfortunately misplaced. or ask your favorite author a question with Trust Exercise’s Karen section—for want of better phrasing—is a striking piece of work, one that exposes the fictions of Sarah’s story while engineering its own. By joining Slate Plus you support our work and get exclusive content. A good revenge plot makes for compelling reading, but might it not also be a kind of, The Stan Lee Story That Tore Apart Marvel Comics, The French #MeToo Memoir That Ensnares the Abuser in His Own Trap, When Wearing the Wrong Pants Could Land You in Prison, Patricia Lockwood on the Terrors of the Internet, the Power of Novels, and Her Famous Cat. In her new novel, “Trust Exercise,” Susan Choi trains her lens on a group of high school drama students, zooming in first on their teenage years, then focusing on them years later. Slate may earn an affiliate commission. To begin the exercise, transform a scene from the spoiler into a detailed mental snapshot. Trust Exercise busts out of its coming-of-age shell and becomes a stranger and far more marvelous creature.” ―Slate “Choi, a master novelist, takes advantage of her prose’s magnetic qualities.

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