Trust Exercise by Susan Choi

 Friday, Nov. 13, 2020--San Antonio

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi is a complex book that won the National Book Award for fiction in 2019.  It's a story built around the students attending a high school for the performing arts in a large American city (based on hints that it has an opera house, has Spanish moss hanging from oak trees, is not near a river or a body of water, has a park name I could match, and others, I pictured Houston as the location).  Students, a graduate, and a faculty member from a similar school in England who make a visit in the spring to stay with the American students and perform a play at their school are also a part of the story.  A major topic throughout is sexual exploitation.  Another topic is that most of these students dreaming of becoming stars in theatre, dance, voice, etc., will never make it--that a rare few students over the years have had some minor success and maybe one has had success that could be considered great enough to avoid the "minor" designation but not great enough to be a known name by most people.  Most of these students are talented only in one discipline and some of them have quite limited talents even in that best discipline.  So the book is about the struggles of these students, their families, and their faculty members in dealing with their hopes and dreams and with their disappointments and failures.  There is a major twist that occurs right in the middle of the book.  At times the story flows smoothly and is very entertaining.  At other times, it is drug down by details (lots of explanations of the true meanings of words as they are used and what else they could mean) and confusion (due to the fact that the same character may be referenced by different names at different times).  The complexity of the story (including the twist that occurs) must be the reason it won the award.  As I read, at times I thought I would give the book 4 1/2 or maybe even 5 stars, but at other times, I wanted to give it 2 1/2 to 3 stars and considered quitting it.  By the end, I was glad to be finished with the book and settled on a rating of 3 1/2 stars out of 5.