Reviews with content warning for Child abuse - Trust Exercise

Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

12 reviews

siobhanward's review against another edition

challenging slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I don't know if I didn't like the characters, or the plot, or what, but this was a slog. I'm not sure what I was supposed to be thinking while I read this book - the second part of the book was interesting as it unraveled a lot of the first part, but then the end felt detached from the rest of the book and it left me wondering what had happened (and not in a good way).

The plot was hard to stomach - a lot happens in this book that is really just hard to read, and it isn't made any better by the fact the characters feel like odd caricatures (which is explained in the second part of the book, but didn't make the first part easier to read). This book has very mixed reviews, but one reviewer put it well in that if you don't like it in the first ~50 or so pages, you won't like it at all.

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laurensilva's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Trust Exercise is an interesting exploration into how there are always several sides to a story. We begin fully believing Sarah's narration, even though she is a teenager when everything seems outsized, only

to be told about halfway through the book that this has all been "fiction," or more accurately, "auto-fiction." We enter a new POV, "Karen's," which tells us that the Sarah we know is fake, a self-absorbed lie. It turns our preconceived notions around. But because of this switch, Choi also gets us questioning Karen's POV. Just like Karen says Sarah cannot speak to Karen's relationship with "Elli," neither can Karen truly know Sarah's relationship with her own mother; but still, Karen speaks with full authority on that topic. Karen is written from the self-righteous POV that she alone is right, she alone knows the truth and is a victim of Sarah's re-telling.

I do love how Choi switches between first and third person narration, especially with Karen, underscoring the difference between what a person remembers and what "actually" happened. For example, Karen's initial first-person telling of what happened between her and Sarah is that Karen went away to "Bible school" for the "fall and winter of [her] junior year" and Sarah struck out alone to London. Then about 70 pages later, we get a third-person telling of "the truth."

I do think we could have done without the final section with Claire. I feel like that story line cheapens the rest of the book, turning it more into a soap opera drama.

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campjamie's review

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challenging dark mysterious

3.0

I’m gonna be thinking about this one for a while, because it was a bit of a confusing read

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gcarlson94's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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internetegg's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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mia_merrill's review

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emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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sageypants's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I finished this book breathless, and although I was tired, when I opened the app to mark it as Read, I couldn’t help scrolling through reviews, curious what other peoples’ interpretations of the identities of certain characters were. I was actually appalled at the number of one star reviews from people who didn’t even finish the first part??? I guess out of offense in defense of Susan Choi, I felt the need to actually lay out a serious and thorough review of my own even though I’m not usually the type and hadn’t been planning on it at all.

I was first exposed to “Trust Exercise” when I, on a whim, decided to go to my University’s book store for a reading night. I had no idea what to expect, had never heard of the author or the book before, and was instantly struck by the contrast between my impression of Choi, her illustrative and smooth prose, and the subject matter. I was compelled!

I think for a lot of people picking up a book like this for the first time, it’s a very uncomfortable first impression. The book initially presents itself as a moody teenage romance with an uncomfortable amount of graphic detail and a noticeable lack of self-awareness. I am not surprised that there are people who were disgusted by graphic scenes of teenagers having sex and decided to close the book, rate it one star, call it annoying and pretentious and unnecessary, then moved on to the next. But upon reaching the perspective shift, the true narrative unfolds, and each layer peeling back reveals another layer I never knew existed.

To say the book is “trying too hard”, that it’s “pretentious” and says only vague musings about life instead of prompting real discussion seems, to me, and egregious and offensive misrepresentation of its concept and execution. I can understand the criticisms of some scenes feeling too intense, and I also wanted to pull back at some points, but I really challenge people to let themselves be uncomfortable. (Obviously if the contents are triggering and affecting your health then take care of yourself, but this is separate from feeling uncomfortable.)

The contrast between the first half of the book—the way the pain is muted and dulled, the way the darker aspects of abuse are disguised and rewritten to have happened to other people—and the second half of the book—the challenging truths finally being faced, and not only addressed but weaponized against the narrator of the first half, Sarah, is a thread woven so deftly that it’s a work which requires multiple read-throughs to catch every detail. Choi masterfully toys with our expectations of romanticized pain, disgust at obvious and unfettered abuse, and irritation with her self-absorbed “main” characters, flipping to a completely different writing style, perspective, and tone.

Karen hates Sarah and David as much as every one star reviewer. She doesn’t dance in frilly metaphors about the seascape of lush lawns in Mr. Kingsley’s neighborhood or languish in romantic prose about how tortured she is. Karen is matter-of-fact. She sprinkles multiple, exact definitions of words into her train of thought, she acknowledges every ugly feeling, and acknowledges every contradiction in her feelings. She plans things methodically instead of floating dreamlike through someone else’s story. She resents romantics like Sarah and her mother. She keeps her Self secretive. Where Sarah’s story was published for the world to see, Karen’s is a private performance for us and us alone. And even in her scathing depictions of Sarah’s book, we’re still given nuggets of information that change how we perceive Sarah’s interpretation of events.

Another review highlighted a quote to this point exactly, that we cannot know how our version of events will line up with someone else’s. Both Sarah and Karen are victims, but they’ve internalized and later externalized their conflict in completely different ways. Their abuse, their interpretations of their abuse, and their (imagined?) resolutions to their abuse are /theirs/. There is no manual to being the perfect victim or the perfect friend or the perfect lover or the perfect storyteller.

I feel like I could talk at length about the themes in this book, I’ve already highlighted so many striking lines of prose as well. While some people find it “pretentious”, I was moved. Choi’s sentences are illuminating—inspiring. She makes me want to be a more thoughtful author and a more thoughtful reader, which is really all anyone can ask for by the time they finally put a book down.

If there were any valuable criticisms I could offer, I would say that I wished some parts would linger longer than others. At times the pacing does drag, although this might be from the daunting layout of its chapter-less delivery with thick paragraphs and trailing stream-of-thought exposition. However, there were a lot of really powerful moments I wish lingered a bit longer, and there were themes/arcs I wish had been given more time to bear riper fruit such as Karen’s pregnancy, Sarah and David’s reunion (although I understand why it was limited), and understanding between Karen and Sarah over their shared and yet entirely different experiences of abuse.

I would say to give this book a try if you’re a reader or aspiring writer looking for an unconventional narrative structure and a challenging read, but if it proves to be too challenging for you, and you want to stop, please refrain from leaving a review. I think it’s important to review works as a whole, and not just parts we liked or didn’t like and why we liked or didn’t like them. Reading and reviewing just the first part because you couldn’t get through to the second is disrespectful to entire rest of the work, which completely impacts the reading of the first part. But I’ll get off my soap box for the night.

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