Starred Review for Kirkus Reviews (Thu Apr 28 00:00:00 CDT 2022)

What begins as the story of obsessive first love between drama students at a competitive performing arts high school in the early 1980s twists into something much darker in Choi's singular new novel.The summer between their freshman and sophomore years at the Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts—an elite institution "intended to cream off the most talented at selected pursuits from the regular places all over the [unnamed Southern] city" where they lived—Sarah and David consummate the romance that had been brewing the whole previous year. It is the natural culmination of the "taut, even dangerous energy running between them," which—while naturally occurring—has been fostered by Mr. Kingsley, the head of Theatre Arts, who has positioned himself as the central figure in his students' lives, holding power not only over their professional futures, but their social ones as well: part parent, part guru, part master manipulator. But when Sarah and David return in the fall, their relationship instantly crumbles, and in the wake of their very public dissolution, Sarah finds herself increasingly isolated, dismissed into the shadows of CAPA life. Until, that spring, a British theater troupe comes to campus as part of a cultural exchange, and Sarah, along with her classmate Karen, begin parallel relationships with the English imports: Karen is in love with the director, and Sarah is uncomfortably linked to his protégé, the production's star. It is, until now, a straightforward story, capturing—with nauseating, addictive accuracy—the particular power dynamics of elite theater training. And then, in the second part of the novel, Pulitzer finalist Choi (My Education, 2013, etc.) upends everything we thought we knew, calling the truth of the original narrative into question. (A short coda, set in 2013, recasts it again.) This could easily be insufferable; in Choi's hands, it works: an effective interrogation of memory, the impossible gulf between accuracy and the stories we tell. And yet, as rigorous and as clever and as relevant as it is, the second half of the novel never quite reaches the soaring heights of the first. It's hardly a deal breaker: the writing (exquisite) and the observations (cuttingly accurate) make Choi's latest both wrenching and one-of-a-kind.Never sentimental; always thrillingly alive.

Kirkus Reviews (Fri Oct 04 00:00:00 CDT 2024)

What begins as the story of obsessive first love between drama students at a competitive performing arts high school in the early 1980s twists into something much darker in Choi's singular new novel.The summer between their freshman and sophomore years at the Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts—an elite institution "intended to cream off the most talented at selected pursuits from the regular places all over the [unnamed Southern] city" where they lived—Sarah and David consummate the romance that had been brewing the whole previous year. It is the natural culmination of the "taut, even dangerous energy running between them," which—while naturally occurring—has been fostered by Mr. Kingsley, the head of Theatre Arts, who has positioned himself as the central figure in his students' lives, holding power not only over their professional futures, but their social ones as well: part parent, part guru, part master manipulator. But when Sarah and David return in the fall, their relationship instantly crumbles, and in the wake of their very public dissolution, Sarah finds herself increasingly isolated, dismissed into the shadows of CAPA life. Until, that spring, a British theater troupe comes to campus as part of a cultural exchange, and Sarah, along with her classmate Karen, begin parallel relationships with the English imports: Karen is in love with the director, and Sarah is uncomfortably linked to his protégé, the production's star. It is, until now, a straightforward story, capturing—with nauseating, addictive accuracy—the particular power dynamics of elite theater training. And then, in the second part of the novel, Pulitzer finalist Choi (My Education, 2013, etc.) upends everything we thought we knew, calling the truth of the original narrative into question. (A short coda, set in 2013, recasts it again.) This could easily be insufferable; in Choi's hands, it works: an effective interrogation of memory, the impossible gulf between accuracy and the stories we tell. And yet, as rigorous and as clever and as relevant as it is, the second half of the novel never quite reaches the soaring heights of the first. It's hardly a deal breaker: the writing (exquisite) and the observations (cuttingly accurate) make Choi's latest both wrenching and one-of-a-kind.Never sentimental; always thrillingly alive.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Choi-s superb, powerful fifth novel, after 2013-s My Education, marries exquisite craft with topical urgency. Set in the early 1980s, the book-s first section depicts the Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts, an elite high school in an unnamed Southern city. Galvanized by the charged atmosphere created by the school-s magnetic theater teacher, Mr. Kingsley, 15-year-old classmates Sarah and David have an intense sexual relationship the summer between their freshman and sophomore years. Sarah, who has taken its secrecy for granted, is horrified when David makes their romance public that fall. She repudiates him, the two spend the year estranged, and she grows increasingly isolated until an English theater troupe makes an extended visit to the school. When she is pursued by one of the troupe-s actors at the same time her classmate Karen falls in love with its director, the two young women form a fraught, ambivalent bond. The novel-s second segment reintroduces the characters a dozen years later, shifting from Sarah-s perspective into to a new viewpoint that casts most of what readers thought they knew into doubt. After the tensions of the past culminate in an act at once shocking and inevitable, a brief coda set in 2013 adds a final bold twist. Choi-s themes-among them the long reverberations of adolescent experience, the complexities of consent and coercion, and the inherent unreliability of narratives-are timeless and resonant. Fiercely intelligent, impeccably written, and observed with searing insight, this novel is destined to be a classic. (Apr.)

School Library Journal (Tue Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 2019)

In the first half of this latest novel from Choi ( My Education ), Sarah is studying at a performing arts high school in the 1980s. Owing to adolescent miscommunication, her summer romance with fellow student David crumbles once school resumes in the fall. Drama teacher Mr. Kingsley takes his students through acting exercises that seem to cross boundaries of appropriateness, particularly when involving teenagers with raging hormones and volatile emotions. A visiting theater troupe from England adds to the chaos, which has repercussions decades later. The novel's second section takes a somewhat metafictional approach, as "Karen," a minor character in the first half, objects to the fictional approach taken by "Sarah" in recounting the events in her novel. Throughout, Choi neither sentimentalizes nor trivializes the emotional lives of the teens. Whether by design or chance, the first half of the novel feels "truer" than the more contrived plot machinations of the second half, in which several characters reencounter one another during a play production a decade later. The latter, retrospective approach serves best in examining the confusion and ambiguity of teenage sexuality and how that can be exploited. VERDICT Recommended for readers who invite direct challenges to the novelistic form. [See Prepub Alert, 10/29/18.] Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis