After a brutal public dragging, promising young playwright Cass has bailed on her life in New York, and fled to Los Angeles to reinvent herself, and crash with a friend. While she's there, she meets the next door neighbor/filmmaker to watch, Caroline. Caroline's following a group of teenage girls for her next documentary, because they do something special. They have a Fight Club. Yup, that kind of Fight Club. The more intertwined with the girls Cass becomes, the more uneasy she feels about the way Caroline handles them, and the project. And Cass has already suffered shame in the spotlight... so what does she do now?

Original plot line, takes a while to get you hooked but overall an interesting look into what success costs, what cancel culture does (if anything at all), and what reckoning oneself looks like from all angles.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for advance access to this title!

In 2019, after the release of her widely-lauded album “Norman Fucking Rockwell!,” Lana Del Rey got an unexpected bad review. Actually, it wasn’t a bad review at all: it was a thoughtful, insightful deep-dive that contained a few harsh sentences. Nethertheless, Del Rey sicced her Twitter followers on the reviewer, NPR’s Ann Powers, who was then sent death threats for daring to do her job.

“Here’s a little sidenote on your piece,” Del Rey replied to the Powers on Twitter. “I don’t even relate to one observation you made about the music. There’s nothing uncooked about me. To write about me is nothing like it is to be with me. Never had a persona. Never needed one. Never will.”

This is just one of many recent examples of artists reacting badly to critics. After a so-so Pitchfork review earlier in 2019, Lizzo said that “people who ‘review’ albums and don’t make music themselves should be unemployed.” And the artist Halsey got into some trouble last year for calling for Pitchfork’s offices to be destroyed after the blog published a mediocre review of her latest album. (Pitchfork is indeed headquartered in One World Trade Center, so it’s a bit, uh, tonedeaf to ask for its destruction.)

Unsurprisingly, critics don’t like being told that they should lose their jobs or sent death threats by a horde of angry fans. But while it’s not okay to wish harm upon someone for their opinion of the art you created, and it’s even more consequential to do so if you have millions of Twitter “stans” at your disposal. Even the harshest critics would probably agree: it just sucks when someone doesn’t like something you made!

We Play Ourselves the debut novel by Jen Silverman, is, in part, an exploration of an artist’s gut reaction to a piece of criticism—and how this criticism can sometimes seem unfair and divisive, aimed at cultivating unproductive jealousy among people who just want to be liked by the New York Times.

The narrator in this book, Cass, is a young playwright who recently opened her first off-Broadway show to great anticipation, having just won an award which put her in the company of other young playwrights who went to Yale and Juilliard only to harden her imposter syndrome (she didn’t go to Yale or Juilliard).

When the novel starts, Cass has just fled New York for Los Angeles after a scandal, the details of which we learn more about as she recounts her story. The book goes back and forth from the present in L.A. to the past in New York, sometimes within the span of only a couple of pages, and Cass’ backstory accordingly clears up slowly.

Silverman uses suspense to good effect here, compelling readers to flip pages quickly, desperate to know what happened; what’s the big thing Cass did to ruin her life? Did she kill someone? Did she have an affair?

She didn’t kill someone. She did have an affair, but that’s not why Cass was cancelled. Finally, in the middle of the book, after much anticipation, we find out what happened: Cass, hurt by a New York Times review that “questioned the right of [her] play to exist,” poked someone’s eye out.

It’s a pretty funny thing to get cancelled for.

The eye in question belongs to a young Yale graduate named Tara-Jean Slater, a source of Cass’ inferiority complex. Tara-Jean Slater (who is always referred to by her full name) is the talk of the theatre town, having just written an experimental play about sexual trauma that received a glowing review in the Times, and opportunities are unfolding all around her, ones that Cass should be getting too, except she didn’t receive a glowing review, and now her life is over.

Meanwhile, as the New York part of the story unfolds, Cass lives the L.A. part. She seeks refuge with an old friend named Dylan, who’s going through problems of his own, and her new neighbor is a vapid documentary filmmaker, named Caroline, who is a Los Angeles caricature, obsessed with recognition and doesn’t even get Cass’ name right: she calls her “Cath” for the entirety of their relationship.

Cass –– or “Cath” –– and Caroline take on a documentary project that Cass thinks could take her now-ruined career as a playwright in a new direction. The film is centered on a group of teenage girls who have formed a feminine “fight club,” described as a “feminist reinterpretation of masculine values” and is destined to win awards.

Cass finds out that this “documentary” is heavily staged, the teenage girls at the center of it exploited for artistic purposes, but she’s so desperate for approval she almost doesn’t care. She distracts herself with this new project, becoming acquainted with a group of troubled teenage girls, while constantly thinking about what’s going on in New York and trying to get in touch with her agent, who ghosted her after she almost poked out a fellow playwright’s eye.

Silverman handles these overlapping stories well. There is a lot going on in the plot, however, and not enough time to spend with each of Cass’ relationships. The teenage girl fight club documentary plotline is less interesting than it could be because the reader’s ear is always to the wall, waiting to find out more about what happened with New York and Tara-Jean Slater.

While Cass’ relationship with her new housemates appears dynamic, there still isn’t enough room to explore these relationships in depth, leaving some character arcs feeling a little like reading off a list of names.

The back cover description of “We Play Ourselves” centers one of the teenage girls, B.B., going missing as its driving plotpoint, and it seems almost like it’s going to be a thriller. This does happen, but the drama of that event isn’t what readers will be left thinking about. The plot grabs you in more subtle ways.

As Cass continues working on this documentary project, growing increasingly doubtful of its merits, she realizes that her worst nightmare has come true. Tara-Jean Slater, with her eye patched up, has moved to Los Angeles, the exact place Cass went to avoid her.

But when they bump into each other, Tara-Jean isn’t mad, despite Cass having temporarily rendered her half-blind. Tara-Jean invites her to hang out at her huge Airbnb that she’s renting out while she explores her career options, as the constant praise she garners –– that Cass is so desperate for –– allows for such success.

Still, Cass credits the New York Times review as an important impetus for Tara-Jean’s success: “I can tell she’s special, but why? It takes one powerful person to anoint you. After you’ve been anointed, other people can get on board without having to determine your value for themselves.”

But despite that success, and the glowing review in the Times, Tara-Jean Slater seems miserable. Her art, after all, is about how she was sexually abused as a child by her father. Cass, as a queer woman, has faced some hardship for her identity, but not nearly enough, she thinks, to capitalize off of her own trauma. And in her jealousy of how good Tara-Jean Slater’s art is, she ignores how difficult Tara-Jean’s life is because of that abuse, or is even sickenly envious of that trauma.

It’s an excellent dynamic that Silverman does a great job exploring, inviting readers to sympathize with Cass’ jealousy but realize, even as she talks from the first-person perspective, she’s missing something important.

The last section of the book has Cass leaving L.A., her documentary falling apart and nowhere else to go (“I have used it up, my allotment of next steps”) to stay with her parents in Connecticut. She sleeps a lot, gets a job at CVS and eventually is roped into writing and directing an Easter play at her mother’s church.

The book ends with Cass performing a puppet show for children at a church. And it’s beautiful, her most highly-lauded project yet, and she is happy. It’s a brilliant ending, far more satisfying than if she’d returned to New York and finally won the heart of the New York Times reviewer.

So, to the Lana Del Reys and Halseys in the world, who are rich and widely beloved and get a lot of good reviews but feel their hearts break when they get a bad one: do something small, something that people will really appreciate. Sing for kids at a church. You might get something more out of it.

Words cannot begin to describe how much I loved this one! Seriously, such a great read. Gave me Sally Rooney vibes but had a much thicker plot... yes, it was wholly character development, but it was also wildly entertaining and witty. Jen Silverman, you have my heart. And will have my readership for life!

I really don't know how to review this book, I just want to tell everyone to read it and let it sink in. Jen Silverman's We Play Ourselves is honest, brutal, hilarious, and heartbreaking all at once. If I knew a better h word for brutal I would use it, but I don't think any could fit what I'm trying to say as well. This book is a punch in your face, with scenes that make you gasp and, again, honest portrayals of those in the theatre and film world. We Play Ourselves covers art, sexuality, self discovery, coming of age, and then some. It's about the measures we hold ourselves to, our definitions of success, and the pitfalls of going after something so hard you lose sight of what's real. We Play Ourselves is an unforgettable read.

Stunning and relatable, WE PLAY OURSELVES is everything I hope for when reading a book (and probably more). Displacement is such an interesting topic and made more profound by the events of the past four years, and Jen Silverman masterfully creates a protagonist and journey that is deeply relatable and centering given the current.

Jen Silverman turns her well-honed dramatic literary skills to a novel about a playwright - one who made a terrible decision on an opening night in NYC. What follows is the playwright’s journey from NYC to LA to her hometown in New Hampshire; from despair and failure to ..... if not success, then maybe a more evolved evaluation of what it means to live the life of a creative person. For fans of theater, there is plenty of professional detail of the insular NYC theater scene, as well as swelling prose mapping the heart of every theater-maker. A very moving and spontaneous novel.

"We Play Ourselves" is an enjoyable, sometimes-funny and often-sincere, story, and above all, a story about theatre: about success and failure in an extremely challenging and competitive landscape, and the strange and complicated relationships that people form in it. After a sudden success which leads to the disastrous collapse of her professional and personal life, protagonist Cass flees from New York to LA, where she becomes involved in her neighbor Caroline's film production, about a "fight club" made up of teenage girls. The first part of the book is told in alternating "real-time" events and flashbacks to the aforementioned scandal; the second and third parts occur in real time. The book is full of queer representation, and queerness is a theme which recurs quietly, in the background, and which I thought was done in an honest and nuanced way.

The writing is engaging and the author does a wonderful job with developing the protagonist's voice. Cass is, if not precisely likable, sympathetic (though at times, my reader's secondhand embarrassment for her was difficult to bear!), and the book most shines when it is exploring her relationships with other characters, which are often charmingly strange. The book's focus is primarily on its characters and their growth and development, rather than a driving plot; this worked for me here (as it generally does) but it seemed to lag in energy at times, especially in the middle section. I won't add spoilers, but I really liked the ending as well. Some of the subplots (especially Dylan and Daniel's relationship) were intriguing but felt unfinished to me, or as if they could have been developed more fully.

Overall, an enjoyable read for fans of contemporary literature, character-driven stories, or anyone who's in kind of a weird time in their life right now. My thanks to Netgalley and to the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Who gets to tell your story? And do you get to reinvent yourself, as you move through the seasons of your life? Cass is an 'emerging young playwright' who is shocked when after 10+ years writing and producing off-Broadway plays, she receives a prestigious award, an agent, and an offer to produce her play in quick succession. It doesn't go as smoothly as she hopes it will. And after a horrifying incident, she retreats to LA where she meets a charismatic documentarian and her latest film's subject: a cast of teenage girls.

As Cass inadvertently reinvents herself as she runs away from her problems in NYC, she discovers there's more to life than success. Poignant, and at times hilariously funny and heartbreakingly sad, We Play Ourselves taps into the malaise that so many people feel as one chapter of their life closes and another begins.

We Play Ourselves is a story about deeply flawed characters navigating through their own flaws and the messes they got themselves into by their own rights. There's no room for the main character, or anyone else, to blame others for the funks they find themselves in and they don't try to.

It dives into the world of art, sexuality and complex relationships and this is what might hook you in the most. The characters are not easily likable, but they aren't made to be and I've learned to appreciate that.

The author's writing style keeps you hooked with every turn, the flashbacks cut close enough to keep interest and quench your thirst for whatever happened before at the same time.

But in the end, the book isn't the thriller you are promised and that might leave you a bitter taste if you don't adapt well - and it's not always easy to adapt well halfway through a book that doesn't deliver what's promised and especially if you're not into the genre offered.

All in, it's a fun yet poignant read that leaves you curious for what's to come for the author.

I'm not sure what I was expecting, or even what I wanted from this book, and after reading it I can say that it was not what I was expecting but it was unique and brilliant. The writing is exceptional, the author's writing style is potent and it flows. She conveys Cass' emotions and feelings in a way that is unmistakable but appears effortless. This book kept twisting in ways that pulled me further and further in. I loved the way the author described the characters and how different she managed to make NYC/the theater world feel from LA. I really had no clue what to expect from this book, but it ended up being a coming of age novel for those people who are the black sheep of their family or think that they're not as successful as they thought they would be by this point in their lives. Additionally, I love that she makes this point with the main character who is 33, with a 22 year old recent college grad, and with a 50-something director, showing that these feelings and fears are universal.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman.

Cass has had to go back to LA after a theater scandal left her shamed, despite her climbing fame in NY. She was known as being an up and coming queer playwright, but now she is hiding and figuring out how to restart her life.

But in a short period of time, Cass meets Carolyn, another playwright who works with teen girls, creating an edgy niche in theater. But can Cass get behind what Carolyn is doing after suffering her own scandal? And is Carolyn causing permanent damage to these girls for what she is doing?

Meeeeeh, nah. I wasn't into this one. It felt like it was one long, confusing run on sentence. The story went all over the place, I couldn't tell if we were in past or present tense, and all of the characters were forgettable and not that likable. Not my cuppa.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy of this one..
I really enjoyed this story of Cassie, an up-and-coming queer feminist playwright, who flees to LA after a scandal of her own making. As she attempts to start over, she becomes entangled with a morally questionable filmmaker and her current project. The writing and character development are great, and the novel discusses art, sexuality, ambition, success and failure in some really interesting ways. Can’t wait to read more from this author.....

Let it be known that I've finally found a book that perfectly illustrates the fact that theater and film people are The Absolute Worst™. Jen Silverman has done a public service, and for that we should honor her. This novel is filled with the insufferable people I've encountered time and time again, in all their iterations. This definitely doesn't exclude the main character, Cass. This is a book filled with whining, entitlement, and mistakes on her part. And somehow the reading experience isn't a total drag? What a miracle.

I really enjoyed experiencing Cass' growth over the course of my read, but what most stands out to me is Silverman's humor. As previously hinted, if you have ever worked in theatre or film, you should absolutely pick this up. The self-importance, performative allyship and activism, and general absurdism that come with knowing many a theatre or film person leap off the page here. Showing these sorts of folks for the fools they are was nothing short of cathartic for me.

And the jealousy! Jealousy is a huge factor here. Tara-Jean Slater is the villain in Cass' universe, having risen to enormous success while Cass has floundered. The way Cass fixates on and obsesses over Tara-Jean is equal parts hilarious and pitiful. Moreover, Tara-Jean is made messiah by the theatre community despite the fact that she is completely unremarkable and just in the right place at the right time. Her ideas aren't particularly original, and her poetry! I can't. The layers of ridiculousness, simply sublime. When their paths converge, their conversations are some of my most favorite scenes in the entire novel.

Cass' relationship with B.B., one of the girls participating in the film mentioned in the synopsis, is another one of the highlights of the novel for me. B.B. is precocious and biting in the way that many teenagers can be, without being made overly so in either respect. She brings real humanity to a film subplot that can be devoid of it thanks to the director, Caroline. She also calls out bullshit in a novel full of it, which can serve as quite a relief.

I should say that the synopsis for this is incredibly misleading and suggests that there is a thriller or mystery twist at the center of the narrative. This is absolutely not the case. If you'd like to strap in for a belated coming of age, though, this is a book for you. The novel is way more focused on a self-obsessed, delusional artist becoming an actually decent human being. The film Cass takes part in is a big portion of the novel, to be sure, but the last quarter or so has absolutely nothing to do with that. In that way, I think the pitch for this is a disservice, because it's an interesting narrative — just not the interesting narrative you'd assume it is.

The reason the novel doesn't entirely succeed for me despite being well written and crafted boils down to two simple things: plots and conclusions.

There's a bit too much going on in this relatively short book. For instance, there's an entire subplot about Cass' Los Angeles roommates that doesn't tie into the larger narrative at all and takes up a decent amount of pages. While relatively intriguing, it just didn't fit into the novel's flow. I'd rather have taken that time to learn more about the girls at the center of Caroline's film, since only B.B. was fleshed out in any way.

Most importantly, I don't think this story told me anything new or presented any "lessons" in an interesting way. Success is fleeting, and it can ruin you. Successful people are often wildly unhappy. Artists have a propensity to use other people, sometimes in cruel and vile ways, to further their art. I've heard all of this a million times before.

This is a solid long-form debut for Silverman nonetheless. I'll look back on this one fondly, thanks to how much it spoke to me.

I absolutely loved WE PLAY OURSELVES. It is one of those books where the act of reading the author's incredible writing is such a joy, and it was both hilarious and heartbreaking. We follow Cass, a 33 year old playwright in NYC that gets her big break as her play is produced off-Broadway but shortly thereafter, does something so shocking that it makes her flee to LA as an attempt to run away from a life that, in her eyes, is crumbling fast. The book is about failure and success, realizing that you can't run away from your problems just by leaving places, and (most entertainingly) a takedown of pretentious art, theatre, and filmmaking. I loved Silverman's weird and specific characters, and Cass was certainly a character I could relate to (for better or worse). I will certainly read anything by her in the future, and cannot recommend this one enough.

The protagonist in “We Play Ourselves” is Cass. She’s a young, queer, 30-something playwright from New York City. First, she writes a play. Then earns an award for said play. And immediately leaves town in a shame spiral after doing something really bizarre.

In L.A., she temporarily moves in with her gay friend and his partner, and gets sucked into the “Mormon Sex Cartel” next door. (This is a funny inside joke between the roommates.) Essentially she befriends Caroline, a hyper-confident filmmaker, who’s in the throes of an odd semi-documentary about teenage girl Fight Club. And this woman is oh-so manipulative.

“We Play Ourselves” is a dark comedy on the price of fame and the lengths people will go to get it. It’s also about the ways it [theatre, Hollywood, fame] makes people change and feel lonely. It’s also about becoming who the person who you’re meant to be, and not caring what other people think. And it’s about picking yourself back up again.

Great satirical writing by author Jen Silverman. And amazing narration by Renata Friedman!


Special thanks to Random House for an eArc, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest feedback. I purchased a copy of the audiobook from Penguin Random House Audio to listen to while reading.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House for this advanced review copy.

After an incident in New York expels her from the theatre world, Cass is ready to reset in LA. A late night drink with a magnetic neighbour gives her an opportunity to become someone else, Cath.
As Cath she gets to be a gentler version of herself, working on a film deemed “a feminist Fight Club for girls.” She uses this new mask to shield and rebuild herself without the baggage of the disaster she’s left behind. Is this her opportunity to get her career back?

Nothing is what it seems and her self-indulgences and self-involvement ultimately leaves her naïve to what is happening on the periphery of her existence. We’re all depressed and broken and fucked up in our own ways.

I think ultimately this is a story of redemption and compassion and I enjoyed it very much.

This book holds a special place in my heart right now. It is not perfect - Silverman's writing is wry and vaguely absurd and you really have to be in the right mood for it but when the stars align, it is like magic. Cass is a 33-year-old playwright who recently fled to LA following an incident that has derailed her NYC playwriting career. She befriends Caroline, the next door neighbor of her friend Dylan with whom she is staying, and gets caught up in a new movie Caroline is making that features a group of young girls and their rage. While constantly pining for the life she left and stumbling through the life she has fallen into, Cass ponders what it means to be both at the beginning and end of her career, what it means to love/be loved, and her own identity.

I had the pleasure of working with Jen on her play <i>Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties... </i> at MCC Theater in NYC. I was the Assistant Company Manager then and since had been promoted to Company Manager only to lose my job at the start of the pandemic. I LOLED at almost every other line in this book as it perfectly captured the Off-Broadway (mostly non-profit) theater world: the dysfunctional relationship everyone in industry has with theater, casting famous people ("'She is a certain kind of famous, and that is how you get people to go to the theatre in America.' So we cast her."), the distinctions between LCT3 and the Mitzi (an actual conversation I've had before), how everyone in the theater world drinks ALL THE TIME, how we take everything so seriously but it's just theater and no one DIED, the stupidness of reviewers, and the marketing mechanisms that promote certain pieces. Silverman hits every little tidbit about this life on the nose, both breaking my heart with how much I miss it and reminding me of everything I hated.

Silverman also perfectly touched on my life right now, especially with losing my job. I recently moved back to my parents and childhood bedroom, something Cass ends up doing by the end of the novel. Way back when, I remember all those moments of my parents seeing my name in the Playbill and understanding that I have an actual career and that I'm not wasting my time. Losing my job and moving home was tough but I was able to explore so many more hobbies and also work in a bookstore for the first time (books! Another passion of mine!) and I am honestly SO happy. Cass kept fighting her circumstances but felt fulfillment/okayness/being by the end. The last line of the novel really got me and left me in tears: "... and in this moment I have never been more unfindable, further from anywhere I expected to be, precariously- but thrillingly- suspended.".

Theater is in a hard place right now, just like Cass is. The fact that this novel's final draft and publication date happened during this giant pause is probably the most precious and appropriate things that couldn't happened. I remember crying/laughing when I first read <i>Collective Rage</i> in a moment when I NEEDED that bit of absurd, delightful craziness and Silverman once again hit me in the heartstrings with <i>We Play Ourselves</i>. I immediately texted all my theater friends to READ THIS BOOK but it would also be amazing for anyone who works with heart and passion and sometimes has a reckoning with that.

We first meet Cass, a young playwright once hailed as “a fierce new voice,” as she arrives in Los Angeles to avoid the fallout of a scandal back in the New York theatre world. After moving in with a friend, she’s quickly pulled into the orbit of her next-door neighbor, a charismatic filmmaker named Caroline whose current project focuses on a group of girls in a violent teenage fight club.

As she begins spending all of her time on this ethically questionable project, it becomes clear that Cass is somewhat obsessed with success. She’s also more-than-somewhat obsessed with her nemesis, fellow playwright Tara-Jean Slater.

Like all good nemeses, Tara-Jean Slater is annoyingly successful. She’s a senior at Yale and has already earned more critical acclaim than Cass has, a decade into her career. More annoyingly, she doesn’t even seem to care.

This obsession culminates in the aforementioned scandal, the details of which we don’t learn until almost halfway through the book. I don’t want to ruin anything here, but it’s a little unhinged.

The level of absurdity in that scene is in line with the type of humor throughout the book, which is part of what makes it a thoroughly enjoyable read. If you find the concept of a cardboard cutout of RBG staged in the background of a “documentary” about a teen girl fight club funny, for example, you’ll love it as much as I did.

Silverman also does a great job of writing about perceptions of bisexuality in a way that feels incredibly accurate. As she mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, bisexuals and other people with fluid sexualities can engender a “constant dubiousness ... a constant unwillingness to take [them] at face value.”

But while other characters may attempt to stick Cass with a particular label or consider her “confused” because of her bisexuality, Cass herself doesn’t find her sexuality perplexing. And even though her sexuality isn’t the focal point of her story, it’s refreshing to have a bisexual protagonist who’s comfortable with her own desires.

Queer points:
+3 for some asexual rep (a rarity!)
+7 for a good bit of unrequited queer love for an older French woman
+22 for a handful of references to Cate Blanchett

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book took me completely by surprise, I did not expect to like it this much. It’s about so much to me, but mainly it tackles fame and the desire to be successful and the length one would go to get there. It’s about the impact you have on the people that you meet in your lifetime, how important it is to be kind. It’s about different kinds of intimacy and how easily we can confuse them all and much more.

The characters were so well written that I couldn’t help but care about them, no matter how much I didn’t agree with the things they were doing. I also liked how the story completely changed gears in part 3, almost like the author knew we had had enough. And the ending was just right, I found myself with this great sense of hope and quietness when I had finished it.

Also want to mention that the writing style was just beautiful and fit the story so well.

I was initially drawn to this novel due to the description of the protagonist Cass as a queer, feminist playwright and was intrigued by the idea of a feminist twist on Fight Club. I was really excited to read this but it took me a while to get into it and I couldn't figure out if it was me (I've really been struggling with reading for the last few months) or the storyline. As I got deeper into the story I realized it is because this novel is full of character studies that are so well written that I was empathizing with each character and their relation to each other in a way that was making me read more slowly (much more slowly.) I was so impressed with how Silverman was able to build these character arcs and intersperse the creative concepts and processes of theatre and documentary film-making. There is so much more to this book (sexuality, identity, scandal, the marketability of #MeToo) but I loved this for Cass' coming of age story. I definitely recommend this but I believe readers will love it more if they are interested in theatre/film production, the creative process, and/or a queer woman's rollercoaster ride of fame, infamy, and personal recreation.