WHAT RED WAS

A young woman navigates the aftermath of her rape in young British novelist Price’s sensitive debut.

In her first week of university, Kate Quaile meets Max Rippon—a rom-com–style serendipitous encounter—and the two bond immediately. Theirs is a deep and blissfully uncomplicated friendship. The fact that Max comes from great wealth—an aristocratic father and a famous film director mother—and Kate, raised by a single mom, comes from nothing of note hardly factors into their lives. Max “wasn’t worried about what he might lose,” Kate realizes early in their friendship, “because he’d always had more than enough.” Over the next four years, their friendship—which manages to avoid most common collegiate pitfalls, like romance, or jealousy, or conflict at all—only deepens, as Kate, now an aspiring filmmaker herself, becomes a frequent guest of Max’s family. And then, at a party at Max’s parents’ house, the summer after their graduation, Kate is assaulted and tells no one. A rift opens: As Kate struggles to cope with the impact of the violence, Max is busy with his new London life, which mostly involves partying and half-baked ideas for apps. Eventually, though, Kate, wracked by silence, begins to share her secret—or at least, parts of it. But speaking up, too, has a cost. Though Price spends significant time documenting the repressed angst of the Rippon clan, the novel is strongest when Kate, whose evolving emotional state—her depression and panic giving way to waves of rage—is both the heart and spine of the book. But while the novel is thoughtful and observant about privilege and power, it is not, on the whole, especially insightful about those topics, and the result is a story that feels just a touch too familiar. Despite Price’s careful accounting of their dynamics, the characters here—even Kate, who comes alive in the final few pages—feel oddly nonspecific, without the interests or quirks or internal inconsistencies that differentiate individuals from well-illustrated types.

The novel doesn’t quite reach the depths of its potential, but Price is a novelist worth watching.