Trust Exercise: A Novel

Susan Choi

Apr 2019 · Macmillan Audio · Narrated by Adina Verson, Jennifer Lim, and Suehyla El-Attar

About this audiobook

WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

“Electrifying” (People) • “Masterly” (The Guardian) • “Dramatic and memorable” (The New Yorker) • “Magic” (TIME) • “Ingenious” (The Financial Times) • "A gonzo literary performance” (Entertainment Weekly) • “Rare and splendid” (The Boston Globe) • “Remarkable” (USA Today) • “Delicious” (The New York Times) • “Book groups, meet your next selection" (NPR)

In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.

The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.

As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave listeners with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.

Ratings and reviews

Felt@like living a play

Why is this not available for Australians? :(

About the author

Susan Choi is the author of the novels My Education, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and The Foreign Student. Her work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and winner of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. With David Remnick, Choi co-edited the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. She was the inaugural recipient of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She lives in Brooklyn.