“When I’m in the theatre I feel held. I feel simultaneously safe and like something very dangerous is about to happen, and that dangerous thing is the wall of my chest peeling back — slowly, so slowly, in time with the curtain rising. And if the play is my play then everybody present can gather close and peer at my naked heart,” (Silverman).
Cass has fled to Los Angeles after ruining her career in New York. Her life as a promising feminist playwright has gone down the drain, but Cass can’t fully accept that yet. As she ignores the articles about her online and tries to reinvent herself she meets her next-door neighbour Caroline, a director making a semidocumentary on a group of teenage girls who meet to participate in a Fight Club like group. But as Cass watches the film take shape she is troubled by the way Caroline manipulates the young girls into performing her vision of the movie as she comes to terms with her own relationship to art and the price of fame.
This was a phenomenal book. I love books that deal with theatre in some way, even better when it’s about a playwright, and there are only so many books on that subject so I’m happy I found We Play Ourselves. Silverman gets the beauty and sometimes toxic relationship that can come from working in the theatre, which makes sense considering Silverman themselves is a playwright. It also explains why the dialogue is so good and why some of it is so funny, that’s the true strength of a playwright and I loved whenever characters had conversations because the voices were so unique.
The book is also way more than the description. Yes Cass meets a filmmaker who is making a semidocumentary on a group of teen girl’s Fight Club, yes the roles become blurred in the name of art, but this is also a book about identity, in particular female identity, success, and art. It’s about the fickleness of art, rage, what it means to fail. It is a wonderful stew of ideas that is impossible to accurately explain. I thought Cass was a wonderful narrator to follow, I loved seeing her understanding herself as a successful playwright and a failed one, as a queer person and an artist and trying to find herself amongst it all. I also think this book does an excellent job of portraying unrequited love and limerence, I’ve never seen a novel tackle those topics before.
We Play Ourselves was such a phenomenal novel that tackled a lot topics in an expert way. Silverman is a fantastic writer and I hope to read some of her plays at some point!
Publication: February 9 2021
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 336 pages (Libby)
Source: Library
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Queer, Literary
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as “a fierce new voice” and “queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea.” But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming,and flees to Los Angeles to escape–and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline’s next semidocumentary movie, which follows the girls’ clandestine after-school activity: a Fight Club inspired by the violent classic.
As Cass is drawn into the film’s orbit, she is awed by Caroline’s drive and confidence. But over time, she becomes troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art–especially as the consequences become increasingly disturbing. With her past proving hard to shake and her future one she’s no longer sure she wants, Cass is forced to reckon with her own ambitions and confront what she has come to believe about the steep price of success.
Sarah O'Connor 