WE PLAY OURSELVES

An up-and-coming dramatist deals with the fallout of her ambition.

Writer and playwright Silverman’s debut novel follows a down-on-her-luck artist as she attempts to rebuild her life and career. After 10 years of juggling menial jobs and playwriting, Cass, a 33-year-old New Yorker, gets her big break by winning the Lansing Award—a new prize for emerging playwrights with a $50,000 purse. After she wins the award, she begins to feel legitimacy within the tightknit theater community: “Like a picture coming into focus, my life had been given density and shape by success—and from this new vantage point, I could see that everything behind me had only been a blur.” But after a mortifying series of incidents leaves her ostracized in New York, Cass moves in with a friend in Los Angeles and attempts to rebuild her life. Shortly after fleeing, she meets Caroline, the charismatic filmmaker who lives next door, and the pack of eccentric teenage girls who follow her around. When the two women meet, Caroline believes Cass’ name is Cath—and Cass does not correct her. Instead, she assumes the role of Cath, whom she sees as her second chance for success—though she doesn’t fully understand the consequences at first. Caroline’s film follows the ins and outs of the girls' lives and their strange hobby: hosting a female Fight Club (which Caroline calls “a feminist reinterpretation of masculine values”). As Cass becomes closer to the film, she begins to question what she sees—and who exactly is pulling the strings (on- and off-camera). Oscillating back and forth between the past and present, Silverman explores the ways striving for acclaim upends and then reorients Cass’ life. The quiet meditations on the precariousness and ever changing nature of success, ambition, and artwork are the novel’s greatest strength.

A resonant and thoughtful novel.