Two months ago I woke up early on a Sunday of all days—and by early I mean before even my four-year-old child—to make sure I got a train into Brooklyn in time to see Susan Choi’s panel at the Brooklyn Book Festival. I insisted on seeing Choi because her book Trust Exercise is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and it’s so enigmatic that I felt like seeing her speak would connect me even more to a book that challenged many notions of straight-forward storytelling. Trust Exercise spins a tale of teenagers at a performing arts high school in the 1980s, peering into their adolescence as they flower under the tutelage of a charismatic and manipulative theater teacher. It's set in the past, but undeniably comments on today's world. Halfway through the book, directly after finishing the first part, the narrative swerves into territory that may leave you breathless and cackling (like me) or throwing the book across the room (like many, many people I’ve talked to—some didn’t even get that far).
All that said, last night Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise won the coveted National Book Award for Fiction and I couldn’t be more delighted. I think a lot of people are going to pick up the book now and they will NOT be ready. I can’t wait to witness it.
Choi beat out the excellent short story collection Sabrina & Corina by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, the epic fantasy of Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, the literary mystery of The Other Americans by Laila Lalami, and Russian-set Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips.
See the the list of winners and finalists below. Have you read any? Feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to have an in-depth discussion about Trust Exercise, something I’ve been doing with other readers as they've finished (but also with those who could not bring themselves to finish!).
Fiction
Susan Choi, Trust Exercise
Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Sabrina & Corina: Stories
Marlon James, Black Leopard, Red Wolf
Laila Lalami, The Other Americans
Julia Phillips, Disappearing Earth
Nonfiction
Sarah M. Broom, The Yellow House
Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays
Carolyn Forché, What You Have Heard is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present
Albert Woodfox with Leslie George, Solitary
Poetry
Jericho Brown, The Tradition
Toi Derricotte, "I": New and Selected Poems
Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic
Carmen Giménez Smith, Be Recorder
Arthur Sze, Sight Lines
Translated literature
Khaled Khalifa, Death Is Hard Work
Translated from Arabic by Leri Price
László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming
Translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet
Scholastique Mukasonga, The Barefoot Woman
Translated from French by Jordan Stump
Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police
Translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder
Pajtim Statovci, Crossing
Translated from Finnish by David Hackston
Young people's literature
Akwaeke Emezi, Pet
Jason Reynolds, Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks
Randy Ribay, Patron Saints of Nothing
Laura Ruby, Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All
Martin W. Sandler, 1919: The Year That Changed America