LGBTQ+ Literature & Fiction
![Jen Silverman - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B00LQ81GE4.jpg)
We Play Ourselves: A Novel
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.
FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD• ONE OF BUZZFEED'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • "A blistering story about the costs of creating art."-O: The Oprah Magazine
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.
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.
FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD• ONE OF BUZZFEED'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • "A blistering story about the costs of creating art."-O: The Oprah Magazine
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.
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.
Editorial Reviews
1
I exit LAX and the warm air slaps me awake. The first thing I smell is car exhaust. Then, just under it: desert. People are already upset, a traffic cop is shouting at a red sports car and waving her arms. I think: Turn around. I think: This is not your city.
Dylan's van is farther up. I recognize it because there is only one of its kind in the world-this is what Dylan said on the phone last night: "You'll know it when you see it, it's the only one of its kind in the world." And here it is: spray-painted silver, a big gaping mouth splashed across the front, rows of jaggy shark teeth. Two big cartoon eyes goggling out at the smog. The windows are cranked down all the way, and I catch a glimpse of Dylan before he sees me: head tilted back, shaggy mop of hair, bopping along to some featureless beat. He hasn't changed since we were eighteen. In another fifty years he'll still look like this.
As if feeling my gaze, Dylan's eyes snap open-electric blue-and he's staring straight at me in the rearview mirror. "Cass!"
"Hey."
"Welcome! Get in!"
I pull open the van door and a stink hits me. Not any smell I know. Something like tang and decay and sugar.
"Stingray died in here," Dylan says, easy. He pulls me into a hug, ignoring the car behind us that has started to honk. "It's so good to see you."
"You too," I say, as the honking becomes an urgent staccato pulse. "Should we . . . ?"
Dylan lets me go, runs his hand through my hair-"Even shorter than last time"-and pulls us out into the circular creep of traffic around the terminal. "How was your flight?"
"Good." I crank the window the rest of the way down and brace myself for more questions-I did, after all, show up with only a day's notice. But he's navigating the bottleneck leading out of the airport, a frown line carving his forehead, paying exquisite attention to the road. I remember he drove like this in college too-always the designated driver.
We're quiet even after we get onto the highway. It all seems like a strange dream: the palm trees soaring up, up, up, increasingly unlikely parabolas of trunk that explode into fronds at the top. The light is desert light, and the 105 is packed bumper to bumper; it feels like everybody is breathing in unison, barely separated by the thin skins of our cars.
I didn't sleep last night. I left my roommate Nico a month's rent in cash, and a note in which I told him he could sell whatever furniture was mine and keep the money. He's in Berlin for five weeks, and I was aware, as I slipped out, that my exit was neither honest nor brave. And yet the need to leave felt clearer than anything else had felt in the past several months. Or if what I felt was not clarity, at l...
I exit LAX and the warm air slaps me awake. The first thing I smell is car exhaust. Then, just under it: desert. People are already upset, a traffic cop is shouting at a red sports car and waving her arms. I think: Turn around. I think: This is not your city.
Dylan's van is farther up. I recognize it because there is only one of its kind in the world-this is what Dylan said on the phone last night: "You'll know it when you see it, it's the only one of its kind in the world." And here it is: spray-painted silver, a big gaping mouth splashed across the front, rows of jaggy shark teeth. Two big cartoon eyes goggling out at the smog. The windows are cranked down all the way, and I catch a glimpse of Dylan before he sees me: head tilted back, shaggy mop of hair, bopping along to some featureless beat. He hasn't changed since we were eighteen. In another fifty years he'll still look like this.
As if feeling my gaze, Dylan's eyes snap open-electric blue-and he's staring straight at me in the rearview mirror. "Cass!"
"Hey."
"Welcome! Get in!"
I pull open the van door and a stink hits me. Not any smell I know. Something like tang and decay and sugar.
"Stingray died in here," Dylan says, easy. He pulls me into a hug, ignoring the car behind us that has started to honk. "It's so good to see you."
"You too," I say, as the honking becomes an urgent staccato pulse. "Should we . . . ?"
Dylan lets me go, runs his hand through my hair-"Even shorter than last time"-and pulls us out into the circular creep of traffic around the terminal. "How was your flight?"
"Good." I crank the window the rest of the way down and brace myself for more questions-I did, after all, show up with only a day's notice. But he's navigating the bottleneck leading out of the airport, a frown line carving his forehead, paying exquisite attention to the road. I remember he drove like this in college too-always the designated driver.
We're quiet even after we get onto the highway. It all seems like a strange dream: the palm trees soaring up, up, up, increasingly unlikely parabolas of trunk that explode into fronds at the top. The light is desert light, and the 105 is packed bumper to bumper; it feels like everybody is breathing in unison, barely separated by the thin skins of our cars.
I didn't sleep last night. I left my roommate Nico a month's rent in cash, and a note in which I told him he could sell whatever furniture was mine and keep the money. He's in Berlin for five weeks, and I was aware, as I slipped out, that my exit was neither honest nor brave. And yet the need to leave felt clearer than anything else had felt in the past several months. Or if what I felt was not clarity, at l...
Readers Top Reviews
lauren jarvisSarahal
From the beginning I’m confused. I’m depressed, and I hate the words that are penned across the page. The narrator is all over the place with thoughts and actions and so the whole story follows her around as if it’s a series of short plays. Scene 1..., Act 1.... intermission, scene 6, act 11... And now I have whiplash. But again I can feel the storyline, and see where Cass’ journey did go, could have, and might take her next. It’s a book about just slowing down and seeing it for what it is right now. However, I still didn’t care for it, and I really don’t think I’d recommend it. You don’t like the main character you don’t like her friends, and you don’t care for the way the relationships unfold for everyone on the story. So my 3 stars in generous because I can’t give it two and a half.
Chelsea Bartlett
When I first started reading WE PLAY OURSELVES, I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I found myself moving quickly through it nevertheless. I found it to be a compulsively readable novel, even though I didn't really like the main character. I didn't really like any of the characters, in fact, but in the early parts of the book, I was intrigued by the mystery of what Cass, the protagonist, had done and, more than that, I found myself wanting to watch the train wreck of her life. I wasn't really rooting for her. It was more like I was watching her just to witness her destruction. As the book went on, though, I started to notice a subtle shift. When Cass was presented with opportunities to make choices which could either be good for her or bad for her -- or for those around her -- I found myself hoping that she would make the right choice. I no longer felt like her making the wrong one was inevitable. I was rooting for her! Nothing major happened to force that switch, I just saw her make good choices in small ways often enough that I eventually came to realize that she was capable of more, of doing better. I started hoping that she would find peace, somehow, by the end of the story, even if I wasn't sure how. I never knew what to predict in this book. I had scenes and moments in my head that I knew I wanted to see, and the author delivered every time, but never in a way that I would have expected. In that way, I found the process of reading this novel to be truly satisfying. I also really loved the absurdism, the touches of it here and there just making things so over the top that I had to laugh out loud several times while I read. Tara Jean Slater's fabulous success is a good example of that. I had no doubt that it was intentional on Silverman's part and it delighted me. What I loved most about this book was its portrayal of the tension between creativity and ambition, the way hanging a desire for success on something that's fundamentally a subjective art form can twist an artist up inside. Cass's absolute loathing of Tara Jean Slater, and her simultaneous desire to know that something Slater created was somehow both terrible and transcendent, was so relatable to me, and it felt good to see those nasty feelings written out so plainly on the page. I ended up finding this novel quite delicious, actually. My one critique, maybe, was that there were more characters than there needed to be. I didn't really get lost with them all, but they didn't all feel like people either, and that sometimes reminded me that I was reading a book, rather than allowing me to fully lose myself in it. I wasn't sure I'd like the ending, either, but actually I kind of loved that too. This is a weird one for sure, but it was weird in a cool way, and I think it had a lot to say, some of which really felt like a breath of relief to see on th...
mulholland619
Loved this book. It all feels so familiar the theatre world and LA and hometowns. Yet the voice is singular. I just loved reading this book and found it deeply moving in the end
Rick Cipes
Really enjoyed the theatre meets Hollyweird angle and the soul-grasping undertone throughout.
Mina M.
A layered and resonant reflection of our ability to accept failure, our deepest fears, and anger, in order to truly be in a truce with our beautiful and distorted selves.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
I exit LAX and the warm air slaps me awake. The first thing I smell is car exhaust. Then, just under it: desert. People are already upset, a traffic cop is shouting at a red sports car and waving her arms. I think: Turn around. I think: This is not your city.
Dylan's van is farther up. I recognize it because there is only one of its kind in the world-this is what Dylan said on the phone last night: "You'll know it when you see it, it's the only one of its kind in the world." And here it is: spray-painted silver, a big gaping mouth splashed across the front, rows of jaggy shark teeth. Two big cartoon eyes goggling out at the smog. The windows are cranked down all the way, and I catch a glimpse of Dylan before he sees me: head tilted back, shaggy mop of hair, bopping along to some featureless beat. He hasn't changed since we were eighteen. In another fifty years he'll still look like this.
As if feeling my gaze, Dylan's eyes snap open-electric blue-and he's staring straight at me in the rearview mirror. "Cass!"
"Hey."
"Welcome! Get in!"
I pull open the van door and a stink hits me. Not any smell I know. Something like tang and decay and sugar.
"Stingray died in here," Dylan says, easy. He pulls me into a hug, ignoring the car behind us that has started to honk. "It's so good to see you."
"You too," I say, as the honking becomes an urgent staccato pulse. "Should we . . . ?"
Dylan lets me go, runs his hand through my hair-"Even shorter than last time"-and pulls us out into the circular creep of traffic around the terminal. "How was your flight?"
"Good." I crank the window the rest of the way down and brace myself for more questions-I did, after all, show up with only a day's notice. But he's navigating the bottleneck leading out of the airport, a frown line carving his forehead, paying exquisite attention to the road. I remember he drove like this in college too-always the designated driver.
We're quiet even after we get onto the highway. It all seems like a strange dream: the palm trees soaring up, up, up, increasingly unlikely parabolas of trunk that explode into fronds at the top. The light is desert light, and the 105 is packed bumper to bumper; it feels like everybody is breathing in unison, barely separated by the thin skins of our cars.
I didn't sleep last night. I left my roommate Nico a month's rent in cash, and a note in which I told him he could sell whatever furniture was mine and keep the money. He's in Berlin for five weeks, and I was aware, as I slipped out, that my exit was neither honest nor brave. And yet the need to leave felt clearer than anything else had felt in the past several months. Or if what I felt was not clarity, at least it was adrenaline.
I told almost no one that I was leaving. There aren't a lot of people who would care-for the right reasons, I mean. People want to know what I'm doing about all of the messy aftermath so that they can report back to each other in low voices. Whether or not Tara-Jean Slater is suing me; if it's true that I got tased; that cops came; that the NYPD put out a bulletin; that my agency dropped me; that I'd been arrested but my agent paid bail; that my agent had refused to pay bail, and I'm still locked up somewhere in lower Manhattan; that Tara-Jean Slater's dad is an attorney and he got me moved to Rikers. Rikers feels like a reach to me, but then again, I'm supposed to be the one out of touch with reality, so what do I know. Maybe Rikers really was around the corner.
That isn't why I left-I didn't think I was going to prison-but whenever I ran into vague acquaintances, they looked surprised to see me in public. Eventually that starts to wear on you, and you stop leaving your apartment, and you become a shut-in, and the only way to jog yourself loose from your life, from every detail of your life, is to abandon it.
Other than Dylan, I called only one person last night: Liz, my ex-girlfriend. I was calling to say goodbye, because I felt like it might be strange if she ever came looking for me and I was simply gone, but before I could say anything, she was whispering furiously into the phone: "Cass, we can have coffee, sometimes, in a professional setting, but if you want to hire me for anything you should have your people call my people." And then she paused and asked, "Do you still have people?" And that was insulting enough-in part because of its accuracy-that I hung up without saying anything at all.
I'm lost in my thoughts when Dylan says abruptly, "So, look, we're really happy to have you, but I wanna give you a heads-up about something."
I snap back. Stingray smell. Dylan's eyes, blue like some imp...
I exit LAX and the warm air slaps me awake. The first thing I smell is car exhaust. Then, just under it: desert. People are already upset, a traffic cop is shouting at a red sports car and waving her arms. I think: Turn around. I think: This is not your city.
Dylan's van is farther up. I recognize it because there is only one of its kind in the world-this is what Dylan said on the phone last night: "You'll know it when you see it, it's the only one of its kind in the world." And here it is: spray-painted silver, a big gaping mouth splashed across the front, rows of jaggy shark teeth. Two big cartoon eyes goggling out at the smog. The windows are cranked down all the way, and I catch a glimpse of Dylan before he sees me: head tilted back, shaggy mop of hair, bopping along to some featureless beat. He hasn't changed since we were eighteen. In another fifty years he'll still look like this.
As if feeling my gaze, Dylan's eyes snap open-electric blue-and he's staring straight at me in the rearview mirror. "Cass!"
"Hey."
"Welcome! Get in!"
I pull open the van door and a stink hits me. Not any smell I know. Something like tang and decay and sugar.
"Stingray died in here," Dylan says, easy. He pulls me into a hug, ignoring the car behind us that has started to honk. "It's so good to see you."
"You too," I say, as the honking becomes an urgent staccato pulse. "Should we . . . ?"
Dylan lets me go, runs his hand through my hair-"Even shorter than last time"-and pulls us out into the circular creep of traffic around the terminal. "How was your flight?"
"Good." I crank the window the rest of the way down and brace myself for more questions-I did, after all, show up with only a day's notice. But he's navigating the bottleneck leading out of the airport, a frown line carving his forehead, paying exquisite attention to the road. I remember he drove like this in college too-always the designated driver.
We're quiet even after we get onto the highway. It all seems like a strange dream: the palm trees soaring up, up, up, increasingly unlikely parabolas of trunk that explode into fronds at the top. The light is desert light, and the 105 is packed bumper to bumper; it feels like everybody is breathing in unison, barely separated by the thin skins of our cars.
I didn't sleep last night. I left my roommate Nico a month's rent in cash, and a note in which I told him he could sell whatever furniture was mine and keep the money. He's in Berlin for five weeks, and I was aware, as I slipped out, that my exit was neither honest nor brave. And yet the need to leave felt clearer than anything else had felt in the past several months. Or if what I felt was not clarity, at least it was adrenaline.
I told almost no one that I was leaving. There aren't a lot of people who would care-for the right reasons, I mean. People want to know what I'm doing about all of the messy aftermath so that they can report back to each other in low voices. Whether or not Tara-Jean Slater is suing me; if it's true that I got tased; that cops came; that the NYPD put out a bulletin; that my agency dropped me; that I'd been arrested but my agent paid bail; that my agent had refused to pay bail, and I'm still locked up somewhere in lower Manhattan; that Tara-Jean Slater's dad is an attorney and he got me moved to Rikers. Rikers feels like a reach to me, but then again, I'm supposed to be the one out of touch with reality, so what do I know. Maybe Rikers really was around the corner.
That isn't why I left-I didn't think I was going to prison-but whenever I ran into vague acquaintances, they looked surprised to see me in public. Eventually that starts to wear on you, and you stop leaving your apartment, and you become a shut-in, and the only way to jog yourself loose from your life, from every detail of your life, is to abandon it.
Other than Dylan, I called only one person last night: Liz, my ex-girlfriend. I was calling to say goodbye, because I felt like it might be strange if she ever came looking for me and I was simply gone, but before I could say anything, she was whispering furiously into the phone: "Cass, we can have coffee, sometimes, in a professional setting, but if you want to hire me for anything you should have your people call my people." And then she paused and asked, "Do you still have people?" And that was insulting enough-in part because of its accuracy-that I hung up without saying anything at all.
I'm lost in my thoughts when Dylan says abruptly, "So, look, we're really happy to have you, but I wanna give you a heads-up about something."
I snap back. Stingray smell. Dylan's eyes, blue like some imp...
