WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2019 by The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Buzzfeed, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Bustle, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, The Millions, The Chicago Tribune, and TIME
“Mind-bending. . . . A Gen-X bildungsroman that speaks to young generations, a Russian nesting doll of unreliable narrators, and a slippery #MeToo puzzle-box about the fallibility of memory. . . . [Trust Exercise is] a perfectly stitched together Frankenstein’s monster of narrative introspection and ambiguity. . . . It flexes its own meta-existence—as a novel about the manipulation inherent in any kind of narrative—brilliantly.”
—New York Magazine
“[Trust Exercise] burns more brightly than anything [Choi’s] yet written. This psychologically acute novel enlists your heart as well as your mind. Zing will go certain taut strings in your chest. . . . Choi builds her novel carefully, but it is packed with wild moments of grace and fear and abandon. . . . [A] delicious and, in its way, rather delicate . . . phosphorescent examination of sexual consent.”
—The New York Times
“An intelligent and layered portrait of a school’s legacy. . . . [Trust Exercise] makes something dramatic and memorable from the simple elements of a teen movie.”
—The New Yorker
“Perhaps the best [novel] this year. . . . [Trust Exercise] begins as an enthralling tale of teenage romance and then turns into a meticulously plotted interrogation of the state of the novel itself. . . . Read it once for pleasure, and then again to turn up all the brilliant Easter eggs.”
—Vulture
“Ingenious. . . . Choi’s prose is damp with tears and sweat, bruised with hurt and lust, sprinkled with sugar, salt, and e-numbers. Hormones practically drip off the page. . . . [But] then, suddenly and without warning, Choi executives a bravura bait-and-switch. . . . Sure, submitting to it is a ‘trust exercise’ all of its own, but the razzmatazz that awaits is well worth it.”
—The Financial Times
“Magic. . . . This mind-bending book is worth the wait as Choi challenges readers to consider the boundaries between fiction and reality.”
—TIME
“Masterly. . . . [Choi has] taken the issues raised by #MeToo and shown them as inextricable from more universal questions about taking a major role in someone else’s life, while knowing that we’re offering only a minor part in return. . . . With consummate wit, punchiness and feeling, [Choi] shows how much we need our female novelists within the sea change of our current moment.”
—The Guardian
“An elaborate trick; [Trust Exercise] is a meta work of construction and deconstruction, building a persuasive fictional world and then showing you the girders, the scaffolding underneath, and how it’s all been welded together. It’s also a work that lives in the gray area between art and reality: the space where alchemy happens.”
—The Atlantic
“Book groups, meet your next selection. . . . Trust Exercise is fiction that contains multiple truths and lies. Working with such common material, Choi has produced something uncommonly thought-provoking.”
—NPR
“Electrifying. . . . [A] story that cuts to the heart of gender politics and the teacher-student dynamic.”
—People
“A gonzo literary performance one could mistake for a magic trick, duping its readers with glee before leaving them impossibly moved. . . . Facts are debated in Trust Exercise, yes, but Choi always tells the truth.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“In her masterful, twisty [novel], Susan Choi upgrades the familiar coming-of-age story with remarkable command . . . [displaying her] talent for taking ineffable emotions and giving them an oaken solidity. . . . So many books and films present teenage years as a passing phase, a hormonal storm that passes in time. Choi, in this witty and resonant novel, thinks of it more like an earthquake—a rupture that damages our internal foundations and can require years to repair.”
—USA Today
“A twisting feat of storytelling. . . . [Choi] uses language brilliantly. . . . She is an astute, forensic cartographer of human nature; her characters are both sympathetic and appalling. In the end, [Trust Exercise] is a tale of missed connection and manipulation—and of willing surrender to the lure and peril of the unknown.”
—The Economist
“Choi’s voice blends an adolescent’s awe with an adult’s irony. It’s a letter-perfect satire of the special strain of egotism and obsession that can fester in academic settings. . . . [Choi is] a master of emotional pacing: the sudden revelation, the unexpected attack. . . . How cunningly this novel considers the way teenage sexuality is experienced, manipulated, and remembered. . . . The result is a dramatic exploration of the distorting forces of memory, envy, and art. . . . You won’t be disappointed.”
—The Washington Post
“Compulsively readable and formally brilliant: this is basically a literary unicorn.”
—Lit Hub
“Sharp, willy. . . . 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. . . . Kaleidoscopic. . . . Prepare for an ending that will make you question everything.”
—Refinery29
“A rare and splendid literary creature: piercingly intelligent, engrossingly entertaining, and so masterfully intricate that only after you finish it, stunned, can you step back and marvel.”
—The Boston Globe
“[As readers] we find ourselves doubting everything we previously took as fact. It’s dark, evocative, and fun.”
—Buzzfeed
"A Russian doll of a novel. . . [A] clever and ultimately delightful set of narratives tucked inside on another in a complex take on truth and art, and the grey area in between."
—The Telegraph (UK)
“Choi captures this awkward, vulnerable stage [of maturity] perfectly—the shifts in peer loyalty, the perilous allure of adults. . . . Dazzling.”
—The Mail on Sunday (UK)
“One of the most insightful commentaries on life in the #MeToo era.”
—Vogue (UK)
“A fun twisty treat. . . . You’ll definitely want to read with a friend to trade reactions and hot takes.”
—Book Riot
“A punchy, hotly anticipated novel. . . . Strap in for a wild ride.”
—Town & Country
“Fresh, nuanced. . . . Choi writes passages of real beauty, some of which stumble forth raw and unformed, fragments and observations that double back, accreting. Other times she deploys descriptions that feel more planned out and note perfect.”
—amNY
"Fans of experimental plot structure will find much to love in [this] spellbinding new novel."
—Elle
“A feat. . . . [Trust Exercise] is bold. . . . There is innuendo and insinuation and a hint of sinister. . . . In the end, there’s no shortage of insight in this novel. Or pathos.”
—Bookforum
“[A] remarkable novel with a narrative twist that will knock you out.”
—Bustle
“Gets at questions of truth and fiction in a way that feels, this year, particularly relevant.”
—Vanity Fair
“Never have I ever encountered a narrative twist that caused me to question everything I’d just read.”
—Cosmopolitan
"Explosive. . . . [Trust Exercise] will linger long after the book ends."
—Observer
"This twisty novel . . . seems a straightforward enough story—until the roller-coaster second half makes you doubt everything that came before."
—Marie Claire
“Immerses the reader in the suffocating hothouse atmosphere of a 1980s performing arts high school and all the intense drama, heartbreak, and scandal many remember from their teen years.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Riveting. . . . [Trust Exercise] will surely become a favorite with book clubs.”
—International Examiner
“A book you will very much want to discuss with other readers.”
—Newsday
"Superb, powerful . . . 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."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"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 . . . an effective interrogation of memory, the impossible gulf between accuracy and the stories we tell. . . . The writing (exquisite) and the observations (cuttingly accurate) make Choi's latest both wrenching and one-of-a-kind. Never sentimental; always thrillingly alive."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[Choi’s] finest novel. . . . Trust Exercise should immediately put readers on alert . . . exposing tenuous connections between fiction, truth, lies, and, of course, people. Literary deception rarely reads this well.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Choi toys with our trust but it pays off in dividends. . . . Trust us.”
—Broadway Direct
“Brilliant. . . . Trust Exercise deftly shifts time and perspective, and teen drama becomes a dark, edgy exploration of boundaries between coercion and consent, theater and reality, charisma and manipulation, and student and teacher.”
—The National Book Review
"An ingenious, morally complex exploration of how our youthful entanglements, cruelties, and traumas shape the rest of our lives. Choi’s writing is dazzling in its control and precision; this witty, sharp, unsettling novel grabs you and won’t let you go."
—Dana Spiotta, National Book Award-nominated author of Eat the Document and Innocents and Others
"I can't remember the last time I had such a visceral reaction to a book, or was so dazzled by a writer's inventiveness with structure. Susan Choi is a master and Trust Exercise should be on every human's reading list. A perfect knockout, with profound things to say about art-making, adolescence, and consent."
—Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
"This novel is a work of genius and should be a future classic. It has the most audacious narrative shift I've read since John Fowles's The Collector. Plus, it includes the phrase 'a virtuoso feeling-state lasagna.'"
—Gabe Habash, author of Stephen Florida
"What a wickedly clever, formally inventive book Trust Exercise is. I was blown away by Susan Choi's literary vision, not to mention her sensitivity and wit."
—Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of All Grown Up and The Middlesteins
“As soon as I finished . . . [I was] desperate to talk about the novel with anyone else who’d read it. A startling, perplexing, fascinating book by a writer I’ve long been—and will always be—eager to read.”
—R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
"Packed with the kind of shrewd psychological insights that make you sit up straighter, Trust Exercise is a frequently brilliant novel that draws you in slowly and carefully and then becomes increasingly hard to put down. I don't want to give too much away, so all I'll say is that the book is full of twists that are thrilling without being manipulative or melodramatic. I am sure I am far from the only one who had to put aside everything else while I raced to the end."
—Adelle Waldman, nationally bestselling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
"Trust Exercise is a brilliant and challenging novel, an uncanny evocation of the not-so-distant past that turns into a meditation on the slipperiness of memory and the ethics of storytelling. Susan Choi is a masterful novelist, who understands exactly where we are right now and how we got here."
—Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Fletcher, The Leftovers, Little Children, and Election
★ 11/19/2018
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. (Apr.)
★ 2018-12-11
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.
The summer between their freshman and sophomore years at the Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts—an elite institution "intended to cream off the most talented at selected pursuits from the regular places all over the [unnamed Southern] city" where they lived—Sarah and David consummate the romance that had been brewing the whole previous year. It is the natural culmination of the "taut, even dangerous energy running between them," which—while naturally occurring—has been fostered by Mr. Kingsley, the head of Theatre Arts, who has positioned himself as the central figure in his students' lives, holding power not only over their professional futures, but their social ones as well: part parent, part guru, part master manipulator. But when Sarah and David return in the fall, their relationship instantly crumbles, and in the wake of their very public dissolution, Sarah finds herself increasingly isolated, dismissed into the shadows of CAPA life. Until, that spring, a British theater troupe comes to campus as part of a cultural exchange, and Sarah, along with her classmate Karen, begin parallel relationships with the English imports: Karen is in love with the director, and Sarah is uncomfortably linked to his protégé, the production's star. It is, until now, a straightforward story, capturing—with nauseating, addictive accuracy—the particular power dynamics of elite theater training. And then, in the second part of the novel, Pulitzer finalist Choi (My Education, 2013, etc.) upends everything we thought we knew, calling the truth of the original narrative into question. (A short coda, set in 2013, recasts it again.) This could easily be insufferable; in Choi's hands, it works: an effective interrogation of memory, the impossible gulf between accuracy and the stories we tell. And yet, as rigorous and as clever and as relevant as it is, the second half of the novel never quite reaches the soaring heights of the first. It's hardly a deal breaker: the writing (exquisite) and the observations (cuttingly accurate) make Choi's latest both wrenching and one-of-a-kind.
Never sentimental; always thrillingly alive.
