Sarah Henstra

The battle of the sexes goes to college in this nervy debut novel by a powerful new voice.

The Red Word

Winner of the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction The battle of the sexes goes to college in this nervy debut adult novel by a powerful new voice A smart, dark, and take-no-prisoners look at rape culture and the extremes to which ideology can go The Red Word is a campus novel like no other. As her sophomore year begins, Karen enters into the back-to-school revelry -- particularly at Gamma Beta Chi. When she wakes up one morning on the lawn of Raghurst, a house of radical feminists, she gets a crash course in the state of feminist activism on campus. The frat known as GBC is notorious, she learns, nicknamed "Gang Bang Central" and a prominent contributor to a list of rapists compiled by female students. Despite continuing to party there and dating one of the brothers, Karen is equally seduced by the intellectual stimulation and indomitable spirit of the Raghurst women, who surprise her by wanting her as a housemate and recruiting her into the upper-level class of a charismatic feminist mythology scholar they all adore. As Karen finds herself caught between two increasingly polarized camps, ringleader housemate Dyann believes she has hit on the perfect way to expose and bring down the fraternity as a symbol of rape culture -- but the war between the houses will exact a terrible price. The Red Word captures beautifully the feverish binarism of campus politics and the headlong rush of youth toward new friends, lovers, and life-altering ideas. With strains of Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot, Alison Lurie's Truth and Consequences, and Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, Sarah Henstra's debut adult novel arrives on the wings of furies.

taryn

Almost like Normal People and Circe combined. Really enjoyed it but there was some confronting and tough imagery to work through.

Dearna Mulvaney

Full review: https://wordsoftheroses.wordpress.com...

“This is the trouble with myth. Each of us scoops out our own rotten core and spits it out on stage. We stand around the heap of smoking corpses and declare it fate.”

Wow, I’m not sure what I was excepting from this book but it ended up being way more than I could ever imagine. It was a heavy read full of deep, dark topics but at the same time, I flew through it. This is one I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

I will say if you find rape and sexual assault a triggering topic, I would not recommend this one.

The Red Word follows our protagonist Karen Huls and opens 14 years after her fateful sophomore year. We see her university days as a flashback, brought on by the death of her college housemate, Stephanie McNamara. The majority of the story is set in her time at university during the mid-Nineties. The few sections set in 2010 are just enough to highlight how these events have shaped her as a person.

What enchanted me the most about this novel was how much the subject matter of Karen’s Women and Myth class spills into the telling of the story. In particular how much the narrative reflects Homer and The Iliad. Throughout the novel, the two are described in relation to one another. Brimming underneath the surface everyday campus life is a war. A war held between the Women Studies students—who are demanding a change to the culture surrounding fraternities—and the brothers of GBC—who don’t see their partying ways or how they treat women as an issue.

Henstra portrays a raw and unflinching look at university life. Drug use, excessive drinking, sex and rape is all through interspersed with discussions of feminist theory and myth. I adored this novel and I’m sure there is so much I missed. I will absolutely be re-reading this for years to come.

Nina

death nurse

'The Red Word' offers a lyrical yet eyes-wide-open account of the epic clash between fraternities' time-honored `right to party' and young women's demands for sexual safety and respect. With strains of 'The Marriage Plot' and reminiscent of the work of Zadie Smith and Tom Wolfe

The Red Word

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