Here’s a new entry for my Top Ten reads of 2021 so far, and possibly the best campus novel I've ever read, with the focus squarely on women at an unnamed Ivy in the '90s. The sophomore narrator, Karen, moves from the dorms into Raghurst (ha!),a gay feminist collective (she's straight), but spends much of her time hanging out in a frat house whose figurehead, Bruce, is one of those unattainable BMOC golden boys. The inner tension between Karen's own growing prowess at academics, her bewilderment at her own contradictions, and her desperate craving to be noticed and cherished in the two disparate environments is softened by the Raghurst’s favorite professor of Women and Mythology, who reigns over the feminist collective but, aloofly maintains her Zeus-like distance. Each roommate is complex and fascinatingly developed, and even Bruce and Mike, Karen's brainiac boyfriend, are worthy of our focus. Chapters alternate between Karen's life fifteen years post-graduation and her recounting of the Raghurst plot to bring down the frat's two "rape rooms. Sharply written and perfectly balanced between displays of deep emotions and callow youthful yearnings, this is a most memorable addition to the canon that examines student lives over many eras and locales.

Quotes: “I kept drinking until I couldn’t feel my own skin, until I was wearing my own face strapped around my head.”

“So society sets up these rules and regulations to so-called protect women, but at the same time, everyone kind of expects a woman to be violated at any moment. If she gets raped, or killed, or beaten or whatever, then okay, a rule has been broken, but it’s seen as kind of natural for that to happen because she’s…permeable.” ( )

Sarah Henstra, despite most marketing blurbs I've read, is not merely a fresh young voice graduating from her YA novel Mad Miss Mimic (2015) to her debut adult novel The Red Word; she is a PhD-holding professor and graduate practicum director at Toronto's Ryerson University. Her specialization is 20th-century British literature, upon which she has various scholarly publications. She is a board member of the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP), and she was on the steering committee of the 2016 Canadian Writers’ Summit. Already, she is busy with a new work of fiction entitled Dear Little Jo. Yet for all of her pedigree and hard work, Sarah Henstra has delivered a novel that finds trapeze-artist balance between wide accessibility and complexity. With such a sensitive and contentious subject, she somehow manages to avoid satire and kitsch on the one hand, and sterility on the other. The Red Word is gripping, important, and probably not what you expect.

Read full review: http://www.chrisviabookreviews.com/2017/11/15/the-red-word-2018/ ( )

What a great read! A difficult one, often, with some flaws, but this book tells a brutally honest story and is well written.

Karen is a Canadian attending university in the U.S. She's dating a "frat boy" and living in a house with four lesbians who are committed feminists. We watch Karen as she straddles both worlds and as she tries to determine her own truth, her own version of reality.

The plot evolves as the roommates decide to tackle the rape culture rampant in the fraternities -- a culture condoned by the university administration. This places not only Karen, but other women in a dangerous situation. As Karen asks, do the right people suffer the consequences of the roommates' actions? Where is the trade-off between truth and justice? These are the powerful issues that make the book such a compelling read, even though the characters (except Karen) all seem almost two-dimensional in their unwavering way of seeing the world.

I am anxious to read more by this author. ( )

The Red Word is not an easy book to love, let alone read, but that is, I believe, Sarah Henstra‘s intention. After all, the act of rape is violent and “uncomfortable” for victims; discussing rape culture, especially on university campuses should be equally so for all involved. In that, she succeeds because The Red Word is indeed difficult reading.

Some of this deliberate discomfort by Ms. Henstra has to do with the structure of the novel. Set up in the Greek style of storytelling, there are no chapter breaks per se. Rather, she structures each section by its Greek description. For example, one section is “deux ex machina” while an earlier section is “dicaeologia” or defense plea. These section headings, which also extend to the separation of the story into books, have the purpose of hinting to readers at what is to come in the story without giving away details. To have such deliberate directions about one’s reading placed directly into the story is disconcerting if only because it is unfamiliar. It is a bit like a stranger handing you a brand-new phone and walking away. You like the phone but don’t quite know what to do with it or why you were handed one.

The characters are equally disrupting. They are unabashedly unashamed of their attitudes, behaviors, and intellect, priding themselves on their support of fellow women and the women’s movement in general. In fact, one might easily say that they prefer to use shock and awe as their primary method of proving any point they want to make, whether that be testing one’s acceptance of gay relationships, casual nudity, use of drugs, or their suspicions regarding the preying on women that may or may not occur during frat parties. With Karen’s entrance into Raghurst’s world, Ms. Henstra also uses class differences to further unease, hinting at the idea that feminism and fighting against a rape culture on campus is something about which only the privileged students with no need to work have time to do. Karen, as the only resident of Raghurst to need a job to help pay for things finds herself caught in the middle of both cultures with no desire to improve the situation and a naivete that is a challenge to accept as natural. All of this combines into characters to whom it is difficult to relate and about whom you don’t care in the slightest.

While Ms. Henstra deliberately created characters you won’t like and structured her story in a way that can make for awkward reading, she saves her strongest punch of provocativeness for the language she uses throughout the novel. Throughout the story, Ms. Henstra spares no one with her descriptions or choice of scene. Intellectual conversations between the characters are frank and unapologetic in their academic nature. Sex, consensual and otherwise, plays a large role throughout the story, and she depicts it all without embellishment. These are sex scenes, not love-making or some equally gentle euphemism. These are sex at its most primal and basic – the rutting of young adults on the cusp of adulthood, frantic to extract as much pleasure and experience out of college while they can. Some of these scenes you see as an observer, but others are as a participant, which force you to experience the same fear and disgust as the first-person narrator. If you are squeamish, dislike frank sex scenes, or cannot read about rape or rape scenes, this is not the book for you.

The thing is though that no matter how uneasy you are reading The Red Word, the point Ms. Henstra is attempting to make is an important one, especially in this #metoo era. As the women of Raghurst turn to ever more shocking ways to draw attention to their fight, Ms. Henstra all but slaps you in the face with the warning that we are our own worst enemy when it comes to the battle of the sexes. Not only is it too easy to lose focus or go too far in the fight for justice, other women are more likely to derail your efforts than men. Women are quicker to judge other women for what they wear and how they act. Women are quicker to side with men if a situation gets out of hand. Fighting a rape culture of any sort can be successful but only when all women work together to drive the changes. Just one woman who does not agree makes the fight that much more difficult. It is a simple message, but the way in which Ms. Henstra establishes it is powerful and provocative making The Red Word a necessary novel for the times in which we live.

Set at a mid-90’s college campus, the story follows Karen while exploring the undergraduate experience, rape culture, the birth of third-wave feminism, mythology, and the extremes to which ideology can go. The Red Word is a timely, thought-provoking read and a solid pick for Women’s History Month. ( )