We Play Ourselves - by Jen Silverman (Hardcover)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"Cass was a young, promising playwright, once heralded as a fierce new queer voice in female empowerment. Now, however, following a scandal that forced her abrupt exit from the New York theatre world, she's hiding out in Los Angeles, reeling from her public humiliation, incessantly calling her former agent's assistant in the hopes that she'll put her through, and spying on her next door neighbor, who seems to have a steady stream of mysterious visitors coming in and out of her house at all times. Finally she meets her charismatic neighbor, Corrinne, a successful experimental documentary filmmaker, and discovers that the intimidatingly cool, wise-beyond-their-years pack of teenage girls who spend time at Corrinne's house are the subjects of her next fascinating project, for which Corrinne enlists Cass's help. "Why not?" thinks Cass. It's not like she's doing anything else, and perhaps this film could provide the opportunity to shed her embarrassment and rediscover her place in the spotlight. But as she is pulled deeper into Corrinne and the girls' orbit and the line between art and reality begins to blur, Cass must confront how far she is willing to go for success--and whether or not she can live with the person she would have to become"--<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b>After a humiliating scandal, a young writer flees to the West Coast, where she is drawn into the morally ambiguous orbit of a charismatic filmmaker and the teenage girls who are her next subjects.<br></b><br><b>"A blistering story about the costs of creating art."--<i>Oprah Daily</i></b> <p/>Not too long ago, Cass was a promising young playwright in New York, hailed as "a fierce new voice" and "queer, feminist, and ready to spill the tea." But at the height of all this attention, Cass finds herself at the center of a searing public shaming, and flees to Los Angeles to escape--and reinvent herself. There she meets her next-door neighbor Caroline, a magnetic filmmaker on the rise, as well as the pack of teenage girls who hang around her house. They are the subjects of Caroline's next semidocumentary movie, which follows the girls' clandestine activity: a Fight Club inspired by the violent classic. <p/> As Cass is drawn into the film's orbit, she is awed by Caroline's ambition and confidence. But over time, she becomes troubled by how deeply Caroline is manipulating the teens in the name of art--especially as the consequences become increasingly disturbing. With her past proving hard to shake and her future one she's no longer sure she wants, Cass is forced to reckon with her own ambitions and confront what she has come to believe about the steep price of success.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"<i>We Play Ourselves</i> offers a delightful, satirical glimpse into the entertainment industry and the price of fame. . . . Silverman balances wit with earnestness, the laugh-out-loud moments highlighting the absurdity of writing--whether plays, films or poetry, the genre she skewers most adroitly in a pitch-perfect parody of an overhyped ingénue. Cass's desperation for a new, simpler life is universal. As she falls again and again, the reader believes she has the heart to pick herself back up."<b>--<i>The New York Times Book Review</i></b> <p/>"As funny as it's intellectual, this page-turner about crashing and burning is spot-on about ambition, infatuation, theatre, film, ethics, teens, and everything else."<b>--Emma Donoghue</b> <p/>"The multitalented Jen Silverman knows what she's doing on the page. Funny, sharp, modern--this is an excellent debut novel. Its bold, edgy, strange heroine has adventures and misadventures, screws up again and again, but somehow won my love. I couldn't put this book down."<b>--Weike Wang, PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of <i>Chemistry</i></b> <p/> "This is a book where the questions are the answers, a story of possibility that challenged and expanded the way I think about redemption. Warm in its humanity and cool in its persistent subversion of narrative expectations, it's a sharp and modern first novel. I loved it."<b>--Maggie Shipstead, <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>Seating Arrangements</i> and <i>Astonish Me</i></b> <p/> "A fiercely smart and wildly entertaining exploration of artistic ambition, and what happens when the hunger for fame infects an artist's desire to create something true . . . a uniquely potent take on female rage and competition that also gorgeously evokes the challenge of developing an authentic self when everything we do can be exploited as content. I loved this book and couldn't put it down."<b>--Julie Buntin, author of <i>Marlena</i></b> <p/>"[A] beautifully realized novel about choice, ambition, and revelation . . . This memorable novel deserves a standing ovation."<b>--<i>Booklist</i> (starred review)</b><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><b>Jen Silverman </b>is a New York-based writer and playwright. She is the author of the story collection <i>The Island Dwellers</i>, which was longlisted for a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for debut fiction. Her plays have been produced across the United States and internationally, and she also writes for television and film. She is a two-time MacDowell Colony fellow, a member of New Dramatists, and the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Fellowship, the Yale Drama Series Award, and a Playwrights of New York Fellowship.
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