2019.04.04 18:20
수잔 최 소설 '신뢰 연습(Trust Exercise)' 찬사
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수잔 최 다섯번째 소설 '신뢰 연습(Trust Exercise)' 찬사
"아마도 올해 최고의 소설" -뉴욕 매거진-
한국계 소설가 수잔 최가 출간한 다섯번째 소설 '신뢰 연습(Trust Exercise)'이 찬사를 받고 있다. 1980년대 남부의 한 예술고등학교의 배우 지망생 데이비드와 사라의 이야기를 통해 허구와 진실, 우정과 충성심에 대한 이야기를 담았다.
수잔 최는 인디애나주 사우스벤드에서 한인 아버지와 러시아계 유대인 어머니 사이에서 태어났다. 아홉살 때 부모가 이혼하자 어머니를 따라 휴스턴으로 이주해 성장했다. 예일대학교 영문과 졸업 후 코넬대학원에서 석사학위를 받은 최씨는 카페테리아 직원, 경비원, 화가의 모델 등을 거쳐 '뉴요커' 잡지에서 사실 검증원으로 일했다.
1998년 최씨는 아버지의 삶을 토대로 첫 소설 '외국인 학생(The Foreign Student)'을 발표했다. 한국전쟁을 피해 미 남부로 이주한 한인 유학생이 미국인 여성과 사랑에 빠지는 이야기를 그린 이 작품으로 아시안아메리칸문학상을 수상했다. 2003년 언론 재벌 허스트의 딸 납치사건을 소재로 한 두번째 소설 '미국 여성(American Woman)'으로는 퓰리처상 최종 후보에 올랐다.
2008년 우편폭탄으로 인기 컴퓨터과학 교수가 살해된 후 용의자로 아시아계 수학교수가 지목되며 벌어지는 일을 그린 세번째 소설 '용의자(A Person of Interest)', 2013년 대학원생이 교수의 부인과 동성애에 빠지면서 일어나는 이야기를 그린 'My Education'을 발표했다.
수잔 최의 부친은 인디애나대학교 수학과 교수인 최창씨. 영문학자이자 문학평론가 최재서(1908~1964)의 아들이다. 최씨는 2003년 뉴욕타임스의 식당비평가 피트 웰스와 결혼, 브루클린에서 두 아들을 두었으며, 2016년 결별했다.
*수잔 최 인터뷰 An Interview with Susan Choi 2008
*최근 뉴욕 매거진과의 인터뷰에서 실린 수잔 최의 서재 중엔 한국어 서적 한권이 주목을 끈다. 한국 생태학문 연구가 안승준(1966-1991)의 에세이집 '살아는 있는 것이오' (1992)다.
Susan Choi Complicates the Plot How rage and the Access Hollywood tape inspired this spring’s most inventive and polarizing novel.
By Hillary Kelly Photograph by Daniel Dorsa
https://www.vulture.com/2019/03/susan-choi-trust-exercise.html
TRUST EXERCISE
A Novel by Susan Choi
Henry Holt and Co.
Pulitzer finalist Susan Choi's multi-part, narrative-upending novel, in which "the long reverberations of adolescent experience, the complexities of consent and coercion, and the inherent unreliability of narratives... are timeless and resonant." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
In an American suburb in the early 1980s, students at a highly competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarified bubble, ambitiously pursuing music, movement, Shakespeare, and, particularly, their acting classes. When within this striving “Brotherhood of the Arts,” two freshmen, David and Sarah, fall headlong into love, their passion does not go unnoticed—or untoyed with—by anyone, especially not by their charismatic acting teacher, Mr. Kingsley.
The outside world of family life and economic status, of academic pressure and of their future adult lives, fails to penetrate this school’s walls—until it does, in a shocking spiral of events that catapults the action forward in time and flips the premise upside-down. What the reader believes to have happened to David and Sarah and their friends is not entirely true—though it’s not false, either. It takes until the book’s stunning coda for the final piece of the puzzle to fall into place—revealing truths that will resonate long after the final sentence.
As captivating and tender as it is surprising, Trust Exercise will incite heated conversations about fiction and truth, and about friendships and loyalties, and will leave readers with wiser understandings of the true capacities of adolescents and of the powers and responsibilities of adults.
Praise for Trust Exercise
"This psychologically acute novel enlists your heart as well as your mind. . . . Packed with wild moments of grace and fear and abandon."
—The New York Times
"Perhaps the best [novel] this year."
—New York Magazine
"Intelligent and layered. . . . Dramatic and memorable."
—The New Yorker
"What a wickedly clever, formally inventive book Trust Exercise is. I was blown away by Susan Choi's literary vision, not to mention her sensitivity and wit."
—Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of All Grown Up and The Middlesteins
“As soon as I finished . . . [I was] desperate to talk about the novel with anyone else who’d read it. A startling, perplexing, fascinating book by a writer I’ve long been—and will always be—eager to read.”
—R.O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries
“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 . . . an effective interrogation of memory, the impossible gulf between accuracy and the stories we tell. . . . 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 (starred review)
“Superb, powerful . . . 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.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“[Choi’s] finest novel. . . . Trust Exercise should immediately put readers on alert . . . exposing tenuous connections between fiction, truth, lies, and, of course, people. Literary deception rarely reads this well.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Compulsively readable and formally brilliant: this is basically a literary unicorn.”
—Lit Hub
“Choi’s newest mind-bender of a novel . . . spins out in entirely unexpected directions”
—Vulture
“Through Choi’s inventive storytelling, [the romance between two high school students] and its aftermath acts as the nexus in a sprawling story of adolescence, loyalty, truth, and fiction.”
—Buzzfeed
“[A] remarkable novel with a narrative twist that will knock you out.”
—Bustle
"Packed with the kind of shrewd psychological insights that make you sit up straighter, Trust Exercise is a frequently brilliant novel that draws you in slowly and carefully and then becomes increasingly hard to put down. I don't want to give too much away, so all I'll say is that the book is full of twists that are thrilling without being manipulative or melodramatic. I am sure I am far from the only one who had to put aside everything else while I raced to the end."
—Adelle Waldman, nationally bestselling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
“Trust Exercise is a brilliant and challenging novel, an uncanny evocation of the not-so-distant past that turns into a meditation on the slipperiness of memory and the ethics of storytelling. Susan Choi is a masterful novelist, who understands exactly where we are right now and how we got here.”
—Tom Perrotta, New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Fletcher, The Leftovers, Little Children, and Election
“An ingenious, morally complex exploration of how our youthful entanglements, cruelties, and traumas shape the rest of our lives. Choi’s writing is dazzling in its control and precision; this witty, sharp, unsettling novel grabs you and won’t let you go.”
—Dana Spiotta, National Book Award-nominated author of Eat the Document and Innocents and Others
“I can’t remember the last time I had such a visceral reaction to a book, or was so dazzled by a writer's inventiveness with structure. Susan Choi is a master and Trust Exercise should be on every human’s reading list. A perfect knockout, with profound things to say about art-making, adolescence, and consent.”
—Julie Buntin, author of Marlena
“This novel is a work of genius and should be a future classic. It has the most audacious narrative shift I’ve read since John Fowles’s The Collector. Plus, it includes the phrase ‘a virtuoso feeling-state lasagna.’”
—Gabe Habash, author of Stephen Florida
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan Choi is the author of the novels My Education, A Person of Interest, American Woman, and The Foreign Student. Her work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award and the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. With David Remnick, she co-edited Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. She’s received NEA and Guggenheim Foundation fellowships. She lives in Brooklyn.
무라카미 하루키 인터뷰, 주간 '뉴요커'에 실린 새 단편 2
