I will succinctly describe this book in one word: raw. And while it is also powerful, daring, shocking, confusing, and bold, above all else it is raw.
Written by Susan Choi, this is the story of a group of talented high school students in an unnamed Southern town who are
…more chosen to attend a special school for the arts. But a literary version of the old TV show "Fame" this is not. This book has only three chapters, each told from a different point of view…each an entirely different story (in a way). On the surface, it is a coming-of-age story, of a passionate teenage romance that ends up broken and angry. But that is such a surface description. It is so much more! Yet, to describe what happens—even a brief plot summary, which I almost always include in my reviews—would be too much of a spoiler. Because what happens in the first chapter gets turned on its head, if not actually inside out, in the second chapter. And the third chapter is enlightening…and heartbreaking.
This is a multilayered book—with so many mindboggling layers I wonder if anyone is able to sort through and even identify them all. Is the book one big trick as some of the loftier professional reviews have maintained? Possibly. But probably not. That said, the author does use tricks. One of the more disconcerting (because it took a while for me to figure it out) is in the second chapter, which is told in the first person by a character named Karen. Multiple times—and always quite suddenly, often in the middle of a paragraph—the voice shifts to the third person, which I eventually surmised is the author's voice interjecting herself into the story.
I will say this about "Trust Exercise": It is a puzzling, strange novel. It is unlike anything I have ever read before. But most of all, and this is what bothers me the most, there is so much about this book that I know I didn't fully understand.
I am giving this book five stars not because I loved it so much that I hope everyone else reads it, too (which is typically why I give a book five stars), but rather because I am in awe of Susan Choi's imaginative narrative and poetry-like writing.
If you are looking for a truly intelligent literary work of fiction, read this. (And good luck understanding it!) (less)
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