The Red Word

“Don't you think watching the video is another kind of assault?” I'd meant to say “another rape”, but I backed off the word last-minute. “Rape” was a red word, a ravenous word. It was double-edged, the word “rape”. It would automatically make me an accuser and Mike an accused. And it would immediately and forever afterward make it my job to justify myself, to defend myself as the accuser against all manner of arguments. I would somehow have to transform myself into an unimpeachable fortress of sexual righteousness.

There's a lot in The Red Word that could come off as in-your-face or gimmicky, much visible technique that I don't always have time for, but honestly, it all works here. How fitting is it to explore modern rape culture by both referencing and quoting from the foundational works that prop up our Western culture? By setting her story on an American Ivy League campus in the 90s, author Sarah Henstra is able to show academics discussing the patriarchal reach of classical myths and students either agreeing or not; and with the main character acting as a blank slate between two extremes, the result is a nuanced and compelling narrative that doesn't resort to absolutes. I'm not surprised that this won the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language Fiction in 2018.

As The Red Word opens, it's 2010 and Karen Huls is a lifestyle photographer – mainly shooting home decor for blogs and print – and she's preparing to attend a conference when she gets word that one of her college roommates has died. The narrative then unspools the intense year that this Canadian spent as a sophomore at an Ivy League school; a year that saw her spend her time living in a house with activist, feminist lesbians and dating a boy from the notorious Gamma Beta Chi fraternity – nicknamed Gang Bang Central. At home, Karen hears that the fraternity arranges all of their social activities around getting young women drunk and vulnerable, and when she's at the frat house, Karen sees that these young women are willing participants in everything that happens; her own boyfriend is sweet and intelligent and simply loves the camaraderie of living in a fraternity; he insists that all the gang bang talk is just jokes. Meanwhile at school, Karen takes a Women and Myth course that dissects the Greek epics that set the rules for how society views women today – whether it's the kidnapping of Helen of Troy or a young co-ed having drunken sex, we assume the woman is a passive object; property to be despoiled or retrieved. Karen is eager to learn from her roommates and her professors, but she also wants to have a good time, and as she has conversations and pursues her studies, we can see all of the influences that will make Karen the person she becomes in the future – and none of it is black and white; there will be tragedy and the villains act out of self-righteousness.

As for the gimmicky: I found it totally fitting that Henstra explores frat culture through Greek myth (even if I don't really know what the frats have to do with the Greeks beyond their names). She uses classical Greek rhetorical devices as chapter headings (1. invocatio [CALLING ON THE MUSE], 21. paradiastole [REFRAMING]), and throughout, there are several Platonic-type dialogues, such as “The women of Raghurst hold forth among themselves on the subject of the biological basis for gender”, which concludes with one woman saying, “Sex was never grounded in human nature. It's a mythical construct.” And another woman retorting, “Go tell a woman she was raped by a construct. Go tell her the power used against her was a myth.” And every now and then, something like a Greek Chorus comments on the action:

O, let us not forget the deathlessness on these five faces! Look how these bright leaping lights are fed by the darkness pressing in. They are creatures shoulder to shoulder even with their separate minds aflame. Look: Five women circle here on the prospering earth, their faces rapt to the fire and their backs resolute to the night.

And all of these literary tricks worked for me: invoking the classical reinforces how so little has changed since Homer and Virgil. In addition to being a book about big ideas, the writing itself was lovely:

I looked up to see a screech owl sitting on a nearby buckthorn. A small, feathered sphere just level with our heads, round yellow eyes returning our gaze with humanoid directness. A solid ten seconds passed before it flew off. Someone sighed, and I felt my own sigh go down through my lungs into my spine. A sinking into the spongy greenblack air, a giving over into unlikelihood and wonder.

As with that phrase “greenblack air”, Karen at one point notes that she loves the invented compound words that translators employ to render the epics into English, and The Red Word is sprinkled throughout with words like rosymuzzled, the papercrumble of dry leaves, and eyes of summersky blue. All of this might sound like a bit much, but it all really worked for me. As a coming-of-age-on-campus story, I appreciate that Karen has a hard time internalising everything she's being taught, this truly isn't a story of absolutes. And further to that, I appreciate that we get to see the same character fifteen years later; see how the protest-marching, hairy-legged protofeminist became a lifestyle photographer – none of us are set in stone at nineteen:

We all thought we were different but we weren't. We all thought we were resisting something but we weren't. We all thought that life would be like this forever but it wouldn't. We were going to spend the rest of our lives trying and failing to re-create this feeling of urgency, of specialness, of being smack at the epicentre of everything important and real happening in the world. For the rest of our lives we would yearn for this feeling of exigency and belonging and fullness and passion. From here on in, it would be nostalgia.

I loved it all.

It was particularly interesting to me to have read The Red Word on the heels of Normal People - they're both coming-of-age stories set on university campuses; they're both about the people and ideas that change you at this impressionable time of life; and they're both frank and graphic about love and sex. And yet, regarding every one of these aspects, I think The Red Word works better. It was interesting that both stories used the obscure word "originary" (which only caught my eye because I noticed  a reviewer on Goodreads complained about its use in Normal People), and because it is a word that is organic to a discussion of classical mythology, it's a word that makes complete sense in The Red Word. I was turned off by Sally Rooney's too-clever discussions of literature within her narrative, but I was totally onboard with Sarah Henstra's idea that we're all still living the Greek tragedies:

It's the most dramatic gesture a woman can make, isn't it? Killing herself. She's never more interesting or eloquent than when she offs herself. Look at us, Karen: We're right in the middle of a freaking masterpiece of literature! Steph kills herself, and the world swoons with the poetry of it all.

Something about the way that Henstra makes all of her technique visible works, when maybe it shouldn't. Happy to have picked this up; delighted to have read these two books back-to-back.

The 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language Fiction Finalists:

Zolitude by Paige Coope
Beirut Hellfire Society by Rawi Hage
The Red Word by Sarah Henstra
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

* Won by The Red Word. I think the GGs picked a really strong list this year and I am pleased that Henstra won.