Reviews and Comments

In the second part of Trust Exercise, a character states that a play she's read is good, or that she read it quickly and she's still thinking about it, which is the same thing, right?

I read the novel quickly, and I'm still thinking about it, but I'm not sure what that means. I appreciate certain well-written characters, even after acts two and three make it clear those characters are not necessarily who act one claimed they were.

In fact, act one tells a story seemingly straightforward, while act one rewrites that story deliberately, while itself telling a story with as many holes in it as the first. Act three, the shortest, barely attempts to tell a story, and avoids answering most questions, while suggesting that act two was itself as deceptive as act one, and that the real story, inasmuch as there is a real story in a work of fiction, is an amalgam of acts one and two.

In the end, which characters were merely renamed for the novel, and which were split up into multiple characters, each fulfilling a role? While act two alerted us to the deception of act one, act three suggests it did so while continuing to use roles in place of people, that act two kept up not only the false names, but the false multiplication of characters.

Is the novel, in the end, the story of an entire class, or of five people, or possibly just two?

This book is lovely and gentle. Translated from Korean, it fills me with something like nostalgia, but for a place and time I've never actually experienced.

Sure, there's a roadie case, but the book is a commentary on what divides us, and those who benefit. Rarely have I heard a more direct and fair expression of unpleasant views, and they're met with the only response I think can ever work. Angry people aren't always wrong on the facts, per se, just in where they choose to focus.

Unrelated to the "John Dies" series or the "Zoey Ashe" series, this book still moves with the energy of both, but is even more relatable than both for being entirely plausible here today.