Narrative Distortions of Memory

Trust Exercise 

by Susan Choi

“REMEMBER THE IMPOSSIBLE eventfulness of time, transformation and emotion packed like gunpowder into the barrel. Remember the dilation and diffusion, the years within days. Theirs were endless; lives flowered and died between waking and noon.”  ― Susan Choi, Trust Exercise



This was a confusing look at relationships in the twenty-first century. Centered around the titular activity the narration changes from section to section in a way that seems quite postmodern. I read the author's American Woman, based on real events, more than a year ago and found this, her latest novel, was more effective in spite of, or perhaps because of, being more unconventional. More loosely inspired by some actual places and events, it comes across as a deliberate demonstration of the possibilities in fiction, from shifting and unreliable narrator to viscerally real characters living lives that change in ways that are both weird and wonderful.

Events at the CAPA(Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts) involve students in love with each other while at the same time being challenged by a overbearing teacher in trust exercises that border on harassment. I'm not sure I would have survived in that environment.

After the first section, which follows Sarah through her sophomore year, we shift into the perspective of Karen, one of Sarah’s classmates. “Karen” – whose name is not really Karen – informs us that for the first hundred or so pages, we’ve been reading a novel written by “Sarah” (whose name is not truly Sarah). Now an adult, not only is Karen utterly dissatisfied with her erasure from the story that plays out in Sarah’s semi-autobiographical novel, she’s also armed with her own version of the events of that year.

Through it all you learn more about the subsequent lives of some of the students which includes surprising twists. In spite of some realistic detail, the over-the-top nature of some of the students' activities is hard to accept. I'll give the author a high rating for imagination, but the structure and execution of the story at times left me wondering what the author intended.

Winner of the National Book Award for fiction in 2019, Trust Exercise is a stunning study of the increasingly muddied line between fact and fiction, the power of the stories we tell ourselves and the consequences of the inherent distortions of memory.