{"id":45215,"date":"2019-04-10T11:12:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T15:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=45215"},"modified":"2019-04-10T09:45:17","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T13:45:17","slug":"five-more-to-go-susan-chois-trust-exercise-in-the-booklist-reader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/five-more-to-go-susan-chois-trust-exercise-in-the-booklist-reader\/","title":{"rendered":"Five More to Go: Susan Choi\u2019s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Trust Exercise<\/strong><\/a> by Susan Choi<\/p>\n

\u201cThat whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,\u201d one character admonishes another in Susan Choi<\/a>\u2019s fifth (and finest) novel. Returning to the multilayered teacher-student power struggles that were seared into My Education<\/em><\/a> (2013), Trust Exercise<\/em> immediately puts readers on alert; the two words will appear four times as a title \u2013 first, as the title of the novel itself, and next as the repeated title of the book\u2019s three sections. But despite being a reference to a soul-baring acting exercise, \u201ctrust,\u201d in Choi\u2019s hands, has little correlation to truth.<\/p>\n

The first \u201cTrust Exercise\u201d section introduces Sarah and David, two 15-year-old students at a suburban performing-arts high school. They\u2019re precariously entangled with each other and overseen (and manipulated) by their magnetic theater teacher, Mr. Kingsley.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust Exercise\u201d number two picks up on page 132, 14 years later \u2013 and reveals \u201cTrust Exercise\u201d number one to be the first 131 pages of Sarah\u2019s newly published novel. Page 132 is also where Sarah\u2019s former best friend, Karen, stopped reading said novel. What happened (or not) thus far gets deconstructed, then expanded, culminating in a series of dramatically orchestrated reunions.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrust Exercise\u201d number three will render all that came before it unreliable, exposing tenuous connections between fiction, truth, lies, and, of course, people. Literary deception rarely reads this well.<\/p>\n

Beyond the more obvious examples of novels with (in)famous unreliable narrators \u2013 think Paula Hawkins\u2019 The Girl on the Train<\/em><\/a>, Gillian Flynn\u2019s Gone Girl<\/em><\/a>, Yann Martel\u2019s The Life of Pi<\/em> \u2013 below you\u2019ll find five intriguing titles populated with untrustworthy but undeniably enigmatic protagonists. Their creators, like Korean American Choi, also share Asian roots.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"A Carnivore\u2019s Inquiry<\/strong><\/a> by Sabina Murray<\/p>\n

Murray\u2019s follow-up to her PEN\/Faulkner-winning short story collection, The Caprices<\/em><\/a>, deals with a different kind of violence (the cover\u2019s depiction of G\u00e9ricault\u2019s \u201cThe Raft of the Medusa\u201d should be a clue). At 23, Katherine Shea already knows too much about cannibalism, art, literature, and … well, some of the cruelest details about (in)humanity. With such a darkly irresistible \u2013 albeit untrustworthy \u2013 narrator, Carnivore<\/em> becomes a mind-boggling exploration of the unexpected that will leave you scratching your head while simultaneously wanting more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"A Case of Exploding Mangoes<\/strong><\/a> by Mohammed Hanif<\/p>\n

Pakistani dictator General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq\u2019s sudden death in a mysterious 1988 plane crash remains unsolved. Hanif, once part of the Pakistani air force and now a British expat, cleverly presents a riotous fictional version of how it all might have happened. Air Force Junior Officer Ali Shigri is still grieving the suicide of his hero father, who was one of Zia\u2019s top commanders. Arrested for possibly helping his roommate go AWOL, Shigri proves to be wily and unreliable, but his charm is addictive as the tragic and wicked \u2013 and entertaining and shocking \u2013 plot unfolds.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"The Good Son<\/strong><\/a> by You-Jeong Jeong and translated by Chi-Young Kim<\/p>\n

The opening sentence \u2013 \u201cThe smell of blood woke me.\u201d \u2013 gives way to a young man discovering his mother\u2019s freshly murdered corpse. He\u2019s gone off his epilepsy medications again and has trouble remembering, but he\u2019s determined to figure out what happened. Initially, the whodunit and howdunit seem obvious. What\u2019s left to solve is the whydunit. The manipulations multiply as details of that horrific night are meted out, interspersed with glimpses of what happened before, what happens after \u2013 and the inevitable growing body count. Award-winning translator Chi-Young Kim ensures that internationally best-selling Jeong is introduced to English-speaking readers with chilling precision, even as the protagonist insists, \u201cAfter all, being true to life isn\u2019t the only way to tell a story.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"The Hole<\/strong><\/a> by Hye-Young Pyun and translated by Sora Kim-Russell<\/p>\n

When Oghi wakes from his coma, the world doesn\u2019t align with his last memories. He survived a car accident, but his wife is dead, and he\u2019s completely paralyzed. Oghi is parentless, childless, and 47, with few friends among his colleagues at the university. His widowed mother-in-law is now \u201chis only family and legal guardian.\u201d In her care, silently trapped in his damaged body, Oghi loses all control of what happens around, to, and because of him. As he remembers more about the accident, his mother-in-law learns intimate details about her deceased daughter\u2019s life. The facade of their happy union cracks and crumbles, with terrifying results.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"Malice<\/strong><\/a> by Keigo Higashino and translated by Alexander O. Smith, with Elye Alexander<\/p>\n

Just before Kumihiko Hidaka was to move to Vancouver, he\u2019s found dead. The last to see the best-selling novelist alive were his second wife, Rie, and his childhood friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Rie went ahead to the hotel where Hidaka was to join her. Meanwhile, Nonoguchi arrived at the Hidaka residence, where he discovered the corpse. The whodunit quickly seems obvious, but in order to reveal the motive and method, the narrative alternates between a truculently unreliable narrator and a tenacious detective. Malice<\/em> is the first title for Anglophone readers in Higashino\u2019s highly successful Detective Kyoichiro Kaga series, which is up to 12 installments in Japan. That Higashino\u2019s Detective Galileo series has already traveled stateside with award-winning success should ensure Detective Kaga, too, will continue sleuthing on U.S. shelves.<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: “Five More to Go: Susan Choi\u2019s TRUST EXERCISE,” The Booklist Reader<\/em>, April 9, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi \u201cThat whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,\u201d one character admonishes another in Susan Choi\u2019s fifth (and finest) novel. Returning to the multilayered teacher-student power struggles that were seared into My Education (2013), Trust Exercise immediately…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45216,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,330,6,1326,197,76,37,38,7243,296,6535,17,66],"tags":[1443,6668,7235,8366,3499,984,75,1445,8045,7974,880,7406,1446,6145,3500,212,3296,6154,1051,616,8271,8367,7975],"class_list":["post-45215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-british-asian","category-fiction","category-filipinao-american","category-hapa","category-japanese","category-korean","category-korean-american","category-lists","category-pakistani","category-repost","category-south-asian","category-translation","tag-alexander-o-smith","tag-booklist","tag-booklist-reader","tag-carnivores-inquiry","tag-case-of-exploding-mangoes","tag-chi-young-kim","tag-death","tag-elye-j-alexander","tag-five-more-to-go","tag-good-son","tag-hole","tag-hye-young-pyun","tag-keigo-higashino","tag-malice","tag-mohammed-hanif","tag-murder","tag-sabina-murray","tag-series-detective-kaga","tag-sora-kim-russell","tag-susan-choi","tag-trust-exercise","tag-unreliable-narrator","tag-you-jeong-jeong"],"yoast_head":"\nFive More to Go: Susan Choi\u2019s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/five-more-to-go-susan-chois-trust-exercise-in-the-booklist-reader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Five More to Go: Susan Choi\u2019s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trust Exercise by Susan Choi \u201cThat whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,\u201d one character admonishes another in Susan Choi\u2019s fifth (and finest) novel. Returning to the multilayered teacher-student power struggles that were seared into My Education (2013), Trust Exercise immediately...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/five-more-to-go-susan-chois-trust-exercise-in-the-booklist-reader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"BookDragon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-04-10T15:12:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-04-10T13:45:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2019\/04\/Five-More-to-Go-Susan-Chois-TRUST-EXERCISE-featured-1-630x315.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"315\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@SmithsonianAPA\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Five More to Go: Susan Choi\u2019s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/five-more-to-go-susan-chois-trust-exercise-in-the-booklist-reader\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Five More to Go: Susan Choi\u2019s Trust Exercise [in The Booklist Reader] - BookDragon","og_description":"Trust Exercise by Susan Choi \u201cThat whole thing about fiction not being the truth is a lie,\u201d one character admonishes another in Susan Choi\u2019s fifth (and finest) novel. 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