The Red Word

I didn't take any Women's Studies courses in college, and feel that reading this book has filled in a bit of that gap for me. Main character Karen is an impressionable young college student, who moves into a house full of upperclasswomen who seem to collectively be in charge of Feminism on campus, and joins in their idolization of a particular women's studies professor. At the same time, Karen also has a major crush on Bruce Comfort, the BMOC at frat house Gamma Beta Chi, where she is girlfriend to a different guy named Mike. I don't know if I've ever read a character as deftly developed as Sarah Henstra's Karen (I loved how proud she was of her experience working at a logging camp, and of her wits and smarts, and her skills as a photographer) who ends up confounding me so completely throughout a novel. I wasn't really clear on what was so great about the women's studies prof, or why she was dating Mike, or how she could be so blinded by Bruce's beauty, or why she was involved with a fraternity at all, considering what a GDI she seemed to be (that's what we non-Greeks used to be called at the University of Wisconsin).

While I'll admit this was an interesting read, a lot of alcohol and drugs factored in to the plot, in a very off-hand sort of way that I would think is beneath an actual college professor. I found the bits of Greek chorus narration to be a little jarring and precocious, "O blessings upon these tiled white rooms with their subdivided pools of curtain quiet!", the bloody gruesome plot-twist seemed B-movie to me, and I wish the flashbacks to present day had proven a bit more enlightening.

I knew this wasn't a book that I was going to enjoy. I knew that going in, by reading the publisher's description. Just seeing the words "rape culture", I knew heavy, uncomfortable, stuff lay ahead of me.

The story is Karen's. She's looking back to the 1990's, when she was a Canadian exchange student at an American university, straddling two worlds: being the girlfriend of a frat boy at Gamma Beta Chi (aka "Gang Bang Central"), and the roommate of a group of lesbian feminists in a house nicknamed "Raghurst". She wants desperately to belong to both. This provides the story, of course, because through her, we see both the problems in the fraternity and the lengths her roommates will go to expose them.

It's an important story to tell, and the importance is elevated by the integration of classical themes. Mythology meshes with reality. A Greek chorus interrupts the narrative every so often, reminding us this story is not new. This story goes back to the ancients. My eyes widened and I was reminded of this sinister danger, this subconscious malevolence that humans have carried for centuries, fed by our collective and cultural stories.

So yes, an important story. However, my problems with the book stem from being unconvinced. I was not convinced that Karen wanted to belong to either of these worlds. Her relationship with her boyfriend Mike is lukewarm at best. Her fascination with Bruce, the golden Adonis of the fraternity, is weak. She's obsessed with his body, but it doesn't seem like enough to justify her walking the dangerous halls of GBC. Same goes for the Raghurst women. They are reckless, self-important, know-it-alls. She follows them around ga-ga much of the time, admiring them and wanting their approval, but I didn't understand why. The author doesn't make any of them likeable, and doesn't demonstrate a bond that would explain Karen's link to them.

I couldn't help but compare this book with Donna Tartt's The Secret History: both share the campus setting, the unlikable characters, the drinking and drug use, the classical themes always there, between the lines. Even the idolising of the professor. But Tartt succeeds where Henstra doesn't, by winning me over to the group, showing me their complex friendships, making me understand their motivations. She even made me root for them to get away with murder.

Karen's story is interesting, and brings up a lot of challenging thoughts about gender politics and the surprising nature of victimisation. There is a lot of Women's Studies rhetoric here. However, again, I was not convinced of the motivation of certain characters, nor did I find the reaction to the main traumatic event very believable. On the other hand, one could say Henstra isn't trying to make it easy on us. Victims aren't always likeable, or even easy to spot, and their actions are not always something we can identify with.

The Red Word , while absorbing and readable, is over-the-top, sort of like a Greek myth. Perhaps the author has succeeded at her goal. She's written a modern day myth, only this one undercuts what most of us know from mythology - and while that was problematic to me in a novel, it's still something to be celebrated.

Going into this novel, I had to brace myself, because I knew I was in for graphic imagery on a subject that's so hard to deal with. Sarah definitely approached rape in an honest, yet respectful way.

What I liked about this book was that it's about such a hard topic, but you are left intrigued by it because we can all relate to it on some degree. The characters are all interesting with their beliefs, actions, and future goals. They were all very well written and the plot was interesting as well. We flip from present-day, adult Karen to 90s Karen in America. The use of Greek mythology was somewhat lost on me though - I could never catch on to them, so definitely brush up on this before you dive into The Red Word!

At times it was a bit wordy, and I felt like it dragged on at parts, so for this reason I think you should proceed with caution. This book is not for just anyone; although it's a topic many of us can relate to, it does require thought and your full attention when reading (it's not a book you can just breeze quickly through!)