We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman
Review of We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman
“And all the parts of me that are ugly and lonely and horrible and sad will be the parts of me that other people hold close to themselves and find a secret resonance with, and about which they say to themselves: I know that thing too, when I’m all alone that’s how I feel too.”
We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman (2021). Published by Random House.
I’d been waiting for this novel to arrive in my Libby for over a month. I didn’t think a lot of people in this county knew about the fact that we had Libby, but I was very wrong as all of the books I was excited about came out all at once. And then I ended up on months-long waiting lists. The one that got me caught onto this book is the cover, which is absolutely stunning, and the premise. I found it originally in a Barnes and Nobles near my house, and I ended up taking a picture of the book to remember it later.
This premise though was absolutely interesting to me because of the fact that it was about a female queer playwright who has been disgraced from the NYC theatre scene. I imagine it’s not that hard to do if you piss off the right people in this food chain, but I imagine this narrator had to get herself into a hot pile of shit if she ran away to Los Angeles. Little did I know, our narrator lowkey needs a therapist because she runs away from all of her problems and thus digs a deeper hole for herself in the process.
I have so many thoughts about this book. Let’s dive into this review, shall we?
Content
Silverman is a playwright by trade, and it really shows in this debut novel. Our main character Cass has been living in New York City working a crap ton of menial gigs in order to survive and writes plays on the side. As many of us writers who have once inhabited the space of NYC and don’t come from trust funds, this is a very relatable reality that Cass is living in. Cass was hot shit once her plays got discovered and she got an emerging writer award, and when her director, someone very established in the industry, warns her about her decisions, Cass seems nonchalant about her art. She’s late to her rehearsals because she was having sex with the lead actress in a bathroom stall. This moment is very poignant to me because the director, Hélène, warns Cass that if she doesn’t focus on her writing and art, she isn’t going to make it in this scene. And Cass shrugs her off, which is the very wrong thing to do.
We then have this theme of the exploitation of women and girls weaved in with the actual story. The bulk of the big action, Cass’ disgrace in the New York theatre scene, has occurred off-scene, and we begin the story after it has happened. After Cass moves to Los Angeles to flee NYC, she joins this filmmaker who has been to Sundance with her new work, a youth girl’s version of Fight Club. This feels very exploitative as I’m listening to it, as the girls are actually orchestrated to beat each other up, and the Black girl is followed into the bathroom and filmed taking out a tampon. Then that footage is scrapped because she’s Black.
We transition back and forth between past and present with the usage of flashbacks. I had an audiobook version of this novel, so I’m not too sure how it appeared on the page, but this format worked very well for me in the audiobook. The writing itself is very fluid, something that had this almost musical quality to it. The dialogue is very good, has this dramatic action to it that marks this the work of a natural playwright. I really liked the diction and images incorporated into the novel, even if I didn’t like the plot as much as I should’ve. The premise is super interesting, but then it gets really weird. The blending of past and present is also well done.
Our main character, Cass, is also kind of insufferable. The scandal that ruined her career was pretty much her own fault, and then she just runs away instead of trying to do damage control. It’s like Hélène said—if you don’t focus on your art and get yourself meddled in other things, you’re going to ruin your shot. And Cass is thirty-three in this novel, meaning she doesn’t have as much time left compared to the up and coming youngsters entering the playwriting arena. Then she also gets involved with these girls in the documentary, who I thought were in high school, and there’s a slightly strange romantic undertone to her relationship with B.B. They’re both queer and bond over that, but their relationship struck me as odd.
While I wasn’t into the plot of this one as much, I found myself digging the questions that it brought up. What truly is success and fame in the world? Is it necessary? I don’t think the blurb and title is completely accurate—one might assume that this book is a crime or thriller novel when it 100% isn’t. It’s literary fiction and it’s rather straightforward, no suspense or anything like that. The only questions and mystery are what happened in NYC and who exactly B.B. is. You might get annoyed with the main character until the final arc of the book, since she is kind of insufferable and this is told in first person, as well as the fact that the novel is kind of slow but then picks up its pacing.
Overall Thoughts
Good writing, but the premise falls short of what was promised. I really liked that premise, but the only thing that got me through this book was the fact that the writing and details that went into it were all really good. I found the New York City scenes to be better than the Los Angeles scenes, probably because of the strange youth Fight Club thing going on. Didn’t really agree with it, it gave off such terrible vibes. If that was Silverman intended, then they did their job. I was indeed worried and slightly horrified for these girls. Perhaps if this focused on the NYC scenes and then we led of to Cass’ disgrace, rather than it being about how and why she fled the scene, then this would’ve been a more interesting and compelling novel to me. But, alas, life didn’t unfold that way.
