The Red Word

by Sarah Henstra

The battle of the sexes goes to college in this smart, thrilling debut by university English professor Sarah Henstra. University student Karen is swept up in back-to-school revelry and when she wakes up after a frat party lying on the lawn of Raghurst, a house of radical feminists, she gets a crash course in anti-frat activism on campus. GBC ('Gang Bang Central') is especially notorious, she learns, with several names featured on a list of date rapists compiled by female students.
Despite continuing to party at GBC and even dating one of the brothers, Karen is seduced by the intellectual stimulation and indomitable spirit of the Raghurst women. As Karen finds herself caught between two increasingly polarized camps, her feminist housemates believe they have hit on the perfect way to expose and bring down the fraternity as a symbol of rape culture… but the war between the houses will exact a terrible price.
The Red Word offers a lyrical yet eyes-wide-open account of the epic clash between fraternities' time-honoured 'right to party' and young women's demands for sexual safety and respect. With strains of The Marriage Plot and reminiscent of the work of Zadie Smith, Donna Tartt and Tom Wolfe, The Red Word arrives on the wings of furies.

Genres: Fiction, Feminism, Canada, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Dark Academia, Book Club

400 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 13, 2018

About the author

SARAH HENSTRA is the author of the instant national bestseller The Lost Tarot (Doubleday Canada, 2024) and The Red Word (Grove/ECW/Tramp), which won the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Dublin International Literary Award. She is also author of the young adult novels Mad Miss Mimic (Penguin Teen, 2015), a CLA Best Book for Teens and a finalist for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical Fiction for Young People, and We Contain Multitudes (Little, Brown/Penguin, 2019), which was the 2022 Vermont Reads program title and was nominated for the White Pine Award. Sarah holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University in Canada.

Reviews

[jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is not an enjoyable book. its not meant to be. its about rape culture and how it is systematically excused in the US, particularly on college campuses.

and a story condemning that culture, as well as tying in and taking inspiration from greek mythology, was sure to be a winner in my eyes. so im really disappointed by how much i failed to enjoy the execution of the story.

mainly, the characters are not likeable. they are pretentious, and not in a fun way. their flaws are annoying rather than entertaining, and im was never really convinced by any of their motives. the alternating present day POV chapters are literally pointless. and i also think the outcome of the story does not satisfy the work and emotions the reader is required to put in to experience the book. the complete 180 flip in the “moral of the story” does the book a great disservice.

so, this story is a necessary observation and critique about the things that often go unpunished. i just wish the execution was more effective.

↠ 2.5 stars

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

UPDATE: WINNER OF THE 2018 GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION
(I'm a little disappointed to learn this... I haven't read enough new Canadian books this year to know what the competition was, but I have to wonder why this was selected as best fiction book of the year.)

I knew this wasn't a book that I was going to enjoy. I knew that going in, by reading the publisher's description. Just seeing the words "rape culture", I knew heavy, uncomfortable, stuff lay ahead of me.

The story is Karen's. She's looking back to the 1990's, when she was a Canadian exchange student at an American university, straddling two worlds: being the girlfriend of a frat boy at Gamma Beta Chi (aka "Gang Bang Central"), and the roommate of a group of lesbian feminists in a house nicknamed "Raghurst". She wants desperately to belong to both. This provides the story, of course, because through her, we see both the problems in the fraternity and the lengths her roommates will go to expose them.

It's an important story to tell, and the importance is elevated by the integration of classical themes. Mythology meshes with reality. A Greek chorus interrupts the narrative every so often, reminding us this story is not new. This story goes back to the ancients. My eyes widened and I was reminded of this sinister danger, this subconscious malevolence that humans have carried for centuries, fed by our collective and cultural stories.

So yes, an important story. However, my problems with the book stem from being unconvinced. I was not convinced that Karen wanted to belong to either of these worlds. Her relationship with her boyfriend Mike is lukewarm at best. Her fascination with Bruce, the golden Adonis of the fraternity, is weak. She's obsessed with his body, but it doesn't seem like enough to justify her walking the dangerous halls of GBC. Same goes for the Raghurst women. They are reckless, self-important, know-it-alls. She follows them around ga-ga much of the time, admiring them and wanting their approval, but I didn't understand why. The author doesn't make any of them likeable, and doesn't demonstrate a bond that would explain Karen's link to them.

I couldn't help but compare this book with Donna Tartt's The Secret History: both share the campus setting, the unlikable characters, the drinking and drug use, the classical themes always there, between the lines. Even the idolising of the professor. But Tartt succeeds where Henstra doesn't, by winning me over to the group, showing me their complex friendships, making me understand their motivations. She even made me root for them to get away with murder.

Karen's story is interesting, and brings up a lot of challenging thoughts about gender politics and the surprising nature of victimisation. There is a lot of Women's Studies rhetoric here. However, again, I was not convinced of the motivation of certain characters, nor did I find the reaction to the main traumatic event very believable. On the other hand, one could say Henstra isn't trying to make it easy on us. Victims aren't always likeable, or even easy to spot, and their actions are not always something we can identify with.

The Red Word , while absorbing and readable, is over-the-top, sort of like a Greek myth. Perhaps the author has succeeded at her goal. She's written a modern day myth, only this one undercuts what most of us know from mythology - and while that was problematic to me in a novel, it's still something to be celebrated.

Thank you to Netgalley and ECW Press for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Felice Laverne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid 4 stars!

O sing of the American student body, glorious and young. We are the future!...Everyone on a university campus is equally young. We are all the same social class…We all wear the same clothes and listen to the same music…We are all giddy and hyperventilating in the superoxygenated atmosphere of attention and information and privilege and power. 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 epicenter 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.

Sarah Henstra’s The Red Word pulsates with the tangible feel of a truly undergraduate experience – in many ways, my experience anyway. From the scraping of coins together for packets of Ramen noodles to the dogged debates in the library over Starbucks on the merits of feminist ideology and the next paper due. All of the key players are present here: the “butch” ultra-feminist, the foreigner, the erudite professor whom all the smart girls look up to and yearn to be like, the frat boys, the rich kids, the students holding down part-time jobs and the free-spirited girls who make kissy-faces at taxi drivers then call them assholes and walk away; they’re all here. If you lived this undergraduate experience, you’ll feel at home here, wrapped in a Snuggie of, yeah, “nostalgia.” You’ll understand the references and won’t be shocked at how often the words “smoke” or “condom” or “rights” come up.

The above quote is a fantastic summation of this novel in all the best ways. The Red Word is about a year in the lives of a group of undergraduate women, and the catastrophes they catalyzed, exacerbated and lived within their “superoxygenated atmosphere of attention and information and privilege and power.” At the center of this story is Karen, a Canadian student on an American Ivy League campus her sophomore year. When Karen moves into “Raghurst,” a student house where a group of lesbian radical feminists live, and simultaneously starts dating a frat boy from GBC (better known as “Gang Bang Central” on campus), it is the spark that ignites the subsequent events; she is straddling a dangerous line between two houses who go to war over women’s rights versus patriarchal “brotherhood” – a war of the greater society as a whole. It’s about their year of learning, of trauma, of sexual exploration and viewing the world around them through their stanch lens of feminism.

"Frat boys like to share. You have to watch your back."

Far beyond just being an ode to campus life, The Red Word explores the crevices of rape culture on college campuses and in society as a whole. It reaches into the nooks and crannies of words like “consent” and “consensual” and shows it all to us through the eyes of a group of young women so far from home, so close and yet so far from finding themselves. Sarah Henstra’s debut is intelligently done, intellectual, and very often witty. It is biting and often cringe-worthy, both theoretically and physically. But keep watching; keep reading. Never look away from this mirror. This novel puts the reader right in the midst of the Crog-wearing, Iliad-quoting erudites of a women-centric viewpoint (They’d hate me for saying that, wouldn’t they?), right in the middle of their bloom of self-awareness.

It did tend toward melodrama in areas, but doesn’t the college experience itself? Toward the end I was thinking, If I see one more melodramatic, theatrical proclamation, I’ll scream. (Oh Dyann, how you would splinter the spears and batter the bright shields! Stay, oh stay with me.) And yet, the subject matter here was so worthy of exploration. Frat culture and pack mentalities. The ethics of “victim blaming” –

*spoken in an existential cadence

If a girl goes into a frat party and gets herself drunk, does she deserve to be gang raped? And if, after being raped, she goes back into that frat and parties to drunkenness again, does she deserve to be blamed? * The politics of single parenthood for the woman – is she weak for “succumbing” to her circumstances, being “trampled by patriarchy,” for letting her parents pull her out of school, for embarking on single-parenthood of an unwanted baby? Or, is there another worthy argument at play here as well? You be the judge.

The Red Word was a fantastic debut novel from Henstra, which I would highly recommend to anyone, particularly college-aged females. If there was ever a novel to sit around and discuss ad nauseam, it's this one. It raised brave questions and turned the typical “college trajectory into adulthood” story on its head. There was nothing predictable about this novel. And I thought that was for the best – because, is there ever really anything predictable about college or our life experiences after it? I think not. Henstra and The Red Word earned a strong 4 stars from the start and held them throughout. ****

*I received an advance-read copy of the book from the publisher, Grove Press, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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[Glenn Sumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner: Governor General’s Award for English-Language Fiction, 2018

It’s been a few weeks since I finished Sarah Henstra’s The Red Word, which won one of Canada’s top literary prizes last fall. But it continues to haunt me.

Perhaps it’s because I live near a big university campus and occasionally pass by frat houses. Also: rape and consent are topics that have been cropping up recently in a lot of the plays I’ve seen. It’s also very well written. Whatever the reason, this book has made me think a lot, and seriously, about its urgent themes. (Note: the book should come with a trigger warning for rape survivors.)

Set-up: Moderately successful Canadian lifestyle photographer Karen Huls hears about a memorial service for one of her college roommates. So while headed to a conference at the same city as her former Ivy League university (where the memorial service is), she recalls the life-changing experiences she had there.

Plot: After a drunken night at a frat party, Karen literally wakes up outside a house occupied by a group of radical feminists who are seeking one more roommate. The unofficial leader of the group is Dyann Brooks-Morriss, a brilliant, bold undergrad who uses phrases like “patriarchal assumptions” and “ideological blind spots.” The women in the house (which they call Raghurst) let Karen move in and are amused that she has ties to one of the campus’ fraternities. (Karen ends up dating one of the brothers, a smart, if basic guy named Mike, but is fascinated by another, Bruce, a “big man on campus,” whom the women say is an abuser.) The women, led by Dyann, hatch a plot to take down the frat – which they see as a symbol of rape culture – and Karen is caught in the middle.

Texture: One of the highlights of the book is how Henstra interweaves Greek myth into the story, from the Greek chapter titles to the faux epic poem feel of certain lines (the opening is intentionally Homeric: “Sing, O Goddess, of the fury of Dyann Brooks-Morriss, teller of unbearable truths. O sing of the rage that kindled one young woman’s heart and the next until it drove us together from our homes, battlethirsty, into the secret places of the enemy.”)

This is fitting because the Raghurst women are all obsessed by a Women & Myth professor, whose discussions lets us think about how the power dynamic between women and men has evolved over the centuries.

Satire: Henstra, a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, gets so much about campus life (at least in the 90s – there aren’t any cell phones or dating apps) right, from its protests to its cliques to its small and large rituals. There’s a section about foods brought to a feminist pot luck that is dead-on accurate. And I really liked Karen’s initial perspective on Mike’s frat brothers, who seem so innocuous. This helps draw us into a world that is a lot more sinister, and dangerous, than it appears.

Warning: Some disturbing things happen midway through the book that make us see all the characters differently. There are also elements of mystery and some contrived plot developments. But these help shed light on some fascinating, brutal truths about human behaviour.

Overall: If you like Margaret Atwood’s novels, you’ll like this. (The book is even structured like many of Atwood’s books.) The secondary characters aren’t fully fleshed out, and I wish antagonist (?) Dyann had a bit more substance to her - just think how memorable Atwood’s antagonists are! And the present-day narrative isn’t nearly as involving as what happened in the past. But Karen is a complex, contradictory figure. The novel manages to examine both the roots of rape culture and its current prevalence without being didactic. Highly recommended.

[Subashini · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a difficult book to review and I started out not knowing where I stand and what star rating to give it, but the more I think about it the more of a bad taste it leaves in my mouth. It’s hard to shake off what I think are some unconscious messages in the novel that seems to want to make excuses for golden boys who belong in fraternities and demonise feminists for being “extremists”.

First, in tems of style and construction, this book purportedly takes a lot of inspiration and thematic concerns from Greek myth both in content and form. The “Greek system” of US college fraternities is pitted against a radical feminist group, and our narrator, Karen, is caught between these two worlds. It’s set in the 1990s because that’s when a lot of feminist discourse and anti-establishment rhetoric became popular in US universities, I believe. I thought Henstra’s writing was most graceful and beautiful when she was simply describing things as she saw them. But the attempt to write in the manner of Greek poets and tragedians did not work; the prose was turgid and overbearing. For example:

“Look at them all sobershowered, each whose duty it is to carry the bones back to a man’s children. All their bronze helmets held in their laps. Look how they are ennobled by loss, valorvaunted by grief. O warmaking Dyann, thou stark of courage, where are you now when I need you?”

Or a description of hospitals:

“O blessings upon these tiled white rooms with their subdivided pools of curtainquiet.”

The narrator, Karen, explains what she finds lovely in her readings of the Greek tragedies: “Achilles was described in the Iliad as ‘godsfavoured.’ I liked how the translator would mash two English words together when no single one could accurately capture the Greek.” I like those mashups, too. But when you have the English language with English words, the mashing of two words together to create a kind of ancient Greek idiom doesn’t work. It might have worked if it was done in a more delicate, poetic way, and if it was kept to a minimum. But as it stands it really weighed down the narrative and－I really hate to use the word “pretentious”, but let’s admit it－it was pretentious as fuck. The symbolism of Greek myth felt tacked on and not organically incorporated into the story; in fact, it felt like a stretch in trying to force the contemporary story into a mythical form.

Second, I understand that this book wants to probe the grey areas of rape culture, especially on-campus rape culture. One thing that was striking to me, and I’m not sure if it was the book’s intention, was how straight men can appear so very anti-rape as an individual－as a boyfriend, or friend, or brother, father, whatever－but in a group situation with other straight men, where they’re drunk out of their minds, and women’s bodies are made available to them, then their anti-rape stance can quickly morph into, “Oh, we were all just having fun” or “Did you see what she did/wore, she wanted it/was enjoying it”.

But uncomfortably, as the book progressed, and even after it ended, it just became a #notallmen book. After a particularly harrowing “sex tape” is leaked (and the production of that tape is more complicated than expected, and that’s the point of the whole book), Karen looks at the frat boys she knows (because she’s dating one of them while in lust with another) and describes them as “soft and silly as puppies”. If the point of the book is to interrogate how a particular form of elitist, academic or institutional “first-world” feminism led by white women can be exlusionary and thus damaging to some people, I would think that you would want to consider women of colour, women living outside of the first world, trans women, and yes, men of colour as the subjects of intersectional oppression. But in this book, the radical feminists are the villains and the golden boys, the white frat dudes who come from financially-comfortable homes and have social cachet, are presented as sympathetic figures, just a bunch of rambunctious silly puppies; and in one case, as a victim-martyr of sorts?!

In the real world, we know about frat culture and rape. We know that men rape women and do everything in their power to pretend it’s not rape. We also know that straight men don’t walk around in fear of militant feminists. (In an ideal world, they should. Sadly, they do not. And that would have been a very different book. But that’s not the book Henstra wanted to write). In writing a “complicated” book about rape culture, muddying the waters about what is a very clear issue, the goal of this book seems to be to exonerate masculine “brotherhood” or to situate it in some mythical, fate-driven world of the ancients. That is not the world as we know it. So I’m left wondering: What’s the point of this book? Maybe the point is to read it as a fantasy, as a myth, but it has many real-world connotations.

The ending was unsatisfying, because the characters were inserted as archetypes and then were suddenly made to be more complicated, but you don’t actually see their complexities. You only see them from Karen’s eyes. And you don’t actually learn or gain anything from Karen’s perspective. She only operates in two modes: wilful ignorance and guilt. She’s young and impressionable and uncertain, a college student, so that is forgivable－but the narrative is split between two timelines, past and present, and present-Karen brings nothing to the table. Literally nothing. Zero. It’s the same Karen from before but with a job and more money. This is a wasted opportunity.

In this book about rape culture, feminism, and heterosexual relations, the women are all shouldering varying degrees of guilt about their complicity. The men? The men are off the hook. So I have to ask, what is complicated in this telling, and what new questions are raised?

(Thanks to the publisher for a review copy via NetGalley.)

[Dannii Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have closed my year by reading what ended up being one of my favourites!

The synopsis cites this a 'campus novel', which it is, that takes a look at rape culture, which it does. The reality of this book, however, is something that no brief synopsis or review of mine could ever accurately portray, so vast is the scope of the topics discoursed.

This is a complicated and twisty novel in all the best ways. The complex and intellectual narrative often felt like it meandered away from the actual bones of the plot and on to more theoretical discussions concerning gender stereotypes, and their conception, and the rape culture that this ultimately has created.

This is a novel heavily influenced, and centred around, academic learning and literary theory. The women's studies course that the characters are enrolled on forms much of their debates and shapes much of their thinking. Themes from their studies are also mirrored in the blatant misogyny of Greek life on a college campus. The scholarly debates were undoubtedly interesting but getting to see the school-room discussions adapted to a potentially real-life scenario added another level to what was already an overwhelmingly clever and brilliantly insightful novel.

Whilst the reader is informed on the subject matter a deceptively ingenious story-line is also delivered. Much of the narrative is formed in the mid-90s college campus but short segments intercede this from protagonist, Karen's, future and adult life. I first thought these a pointless addition but the ending cleverly demonstrates exactly why they were important. The events that occur impact each life and reverberate decades into the future, which the reader gets to view for themselves.

Whilst the denseness of this topic and the depths to which it was discoursed may appear too unwieldy for some readers I thought Henstra demonstrated a profound knowledge that coupled with a sophisticated writing style. It approached the subject matter with the sensitivity it deserved whilst also schooling the reader with a wealth of knowledge that had me note-taking as if this was a non-fiction philosophy and not a fictional account.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the author, Sarah Henstra, and the publisher, Grove Press, Black Cat, for this opportunity.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

This book was definitely a lot.

First of all, I enjoyed all the references to the myths and the Greek classics, they were interesting and they definitely added something to the novel.
Something I found realistic were the characters talking about and being deeply influenced by their studies and professors, it was such a college thing that I could not help but be fond of it.

The take this book had on rape culture gave me a lot to think about, especially about how colleges perceive certain behaviors and if/how they condemn them. Rape culture is definitely something our modern society has to deal with. Rapists should of course be punished for their actions. As we unfortunately know, that isn’t always the case.

The parts set at the fraternity house were definitely the hardest to read for me. I was in a constant state of fear for Karen and I did not like one single boy living in that awful house. No matter what anyone said to cover their asses, in the end they all knew what was going on and they did nothing. There was not one character who redeemed himself, not even one.
I did not see Karen’s fascination with Bruce. She idolized him and it did not make sense in the slightest. He was guilty just as much as all the others, if not more.

Even though I understood the girls’ motives, in the end I didn’t find myself agreeing with the actions they put in place to punish others. It really showed how extreme an ideology can be and even though I did not agree with the course of action I was deeply disappointed when I read that it was all for nothing.

Something good that came out of all the pain and unfairness in this book was the women coming together to try and bring some comfort into each others’ lives. It was so nice to see.

This book is not an easy and light read, but it’s a good one. It’s a book that makes you think and that will probably stay with you. I suggest you give it a chance.

[Paul Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

“They want us to treat rape like a naturally occurring phenomenon, like weather.”

“They want us to sit around passively and wait until the next inevitable incident … and then react to the victimization with all the usual, useless moral outrage.

THE RED WORD is the tumultuous story of a Canadian exchange student’s life at an American Ivy League university. Karen has a foot in two different worlds. Her boyfriend lives in the Gamma Beta Chi fraternity house (GBC, colloquially known as “Gang Bang Central”) and she lives in a home that her hardcore lesbian feminist room-mates have named “Raghurst”!

One does not read THE RED WORD for enjoyment. One reads it to gather information, to form opinions, to provoke your own thoughts and to decide for yourself what is right or wrong, what is acceptable or unacceptable. Certainly, rape culture and toxic masculinity come under heavy fire, and rightly so. But, for my money, Sarah Henstra has also demonstrated that those who would fight misogyny through aggressive feminism can often be labeled as guilty of misandry to the extent that their activities are as hateful and as illegal as those they would choose to do battle against. In addition, Henstra graphically portrays the undergraduate lifestyles of readily available drugs, booze, and sex that young people, newly freed from the bondage of home and parental guidance are simply not equipped to adequately deal with. Idealism and extreme optimism for their future oftens transmogrifies in to extremism, despair, misinterpretation and misapplication of the liberal leanings of their mentors and aggressive self-destructive behaviours.

I close the review as I started. THE RED WORD is gripping and absorbing, if not enjoyable. As a male reader, I was dismayed at the extent to which young men behave in university without any respect for the minds and the bodies of the young women around them. And, while I recognize that there are people who would say that I was guilty of victim blaming or slut-shaming, I would add that I was equally dismayed at the extent to which women continually placed themselves in jeopardy by willingly entering environments in which they knew that the young men around them were, well, (in a word) simply out of control. Last but not least, some indignation and more than a little anger should be reserved for university administrations that overlook the behaviour of fraternities out of a wish to preserve their reputation and, of course, their donor base of wealthy alumni.

If you’re willing to challenge yourself with a book that is neither fun nor entertaining for even a single page, then go for it.

Paul Weiss

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2020
My final book from this year's longlist - this is at the bottom end of the Mookse group's rankings which lowered my expectations, but I found it rather impressive, and a gripping read, and I would not be surprised to see it shortlisted.

The narrator is Karen Huls, and in the framing parts of the story she is a thirty-something photographer based in her native Canada. Most of the book recounts her student days, spent at an unnamed Ivy League university in the U.S.A. The plot is about a conflict between a fraternity house and a militant feminist group that aims to expose their abusive treatment of women, and as the girlfriend of one of the frat boys living in a house with the feminists, Karen has feet in both camps.

At the start of the book she wakes up in the garden of the women's house after a night at the frat house, thinking that has blown her chance of making a good impression with them in her interview later in the day, but they welcome her, and introduce her to their activities and their favourite teacher.

I won't describe the crucial parts of the plot, except to say that Karen's sympathies are nuanced enough to ensure that there are no simple rights and wrongs in the conflict, and for me this made the story more powerful than a simpler more polemical account would have done.

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is my lot in life to be forever chasing THE SECRET HISTORY, a book I read over and over again in college to the point of obsession. It is also a book that people continue to use as a comp title 20 years later because people like me will fall for it. We are inevitably disappointed. But. This is the first time I've read a book and thought, "Wow, this feels like THE SECRET HISTORY." Even better, while it shares some of the same DNA--campus novel, classicism, paganism, obsession, violence--it is also very different, with its own ideas.

For those of you who find nothing in the previous paragraph all that interesting, let me sell you on this book. A university campus in the 1990's. Karen, our protagonist, begins the novel stumbling out of a frat party hookup and into a house of queer feminists in search of a roommate. She may not seem like the best fit at first, but she quickly falls under their spell and they bring her into the fold. As the schoolyear unfolds, Karen becomes closely involved with her roommates, the Women's Center, and the Women and Myth class taught by their idol, Dr. Esterhazy. At the same time, she starts dating the guy she hooked up with and becomes a fixture in the GBC frat, rolling her eyes at their juvenile displays of debauchery and masculine conquests. She becomes more and more obsessed with the two people at the opposite ends of these poles: Dyann, a lesbian intent on systemic change to undo rape culture, and Bruce, a golden god-like frat guy who has late-night chats with her in the bathroom.

I love a book with growing tension, where you know this is all building to a terrible climax, where there is going to be a conflict that will undo some or all of the characters. It is watching a car crash in slow motion and I loved it. This is 90's campus radical feminism, sometimes it sounds a lot like the current generally accepted feminism that has evolved since then, and sometimes it sounds like a college student who has more enthusiasm than common sense.

Henstra's connection to myth and tragedy is strong, sometimes a bit too much. She will occasionally break into that style, "Sing o goddess, etc.," and it works sometimes but not all the time. Likewise her use of metaphor occasionally gets a bit heavy handed, especially the use of Helen of Troy. But these are small notes on a book that is very smart. It is not heavy handed with its message, it does not want us to see Karen or Dyann as completely right or wrong, which is , in my opinion, how it should be. It's buzzing with ideas, good and bad, appropriately like a college student taking a philosophy class who's home for Thanksgiving, it captures that element of college life in a real and visceral way.

Note: As you can probably imagine, rape is a central topic and is depicted on the page. So is plenty of gross frat bro discussion and objectification of women. Also, rather unsurprisingly, given the time period and the topic, there is a lot of sex=gender talk here. It isn't used maliciously, but there are a lot of broad "men" and "women" pronouncements, which is appropriate for the time, but worth being ready for if you're trying to avoid transphobic ideas.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gender politics, sexualised violence, the institutionalised nature of misogyny are all hot topics in fiction, but this is one of the most complex and complicated (in a good way) treatments of these fraught questions that I've read.

Set in a mid-1990s Ivy League university, this explores what happens when Karen starts dating a boy belonging to one of the most notorious fraternities on campus, renowned for their inbred sexism while, at the same time, being adopted by a group of radical feminists. Negotiating between the two polarised positions, Karen finds herself compromised and self-questioning as events take on the hue and character of Greek epic and tragedy.

Hensta writes from a position of theoretical acuteness, throwing in scholarly debates about gender, power and sexuality, and one of the key points in the plot revolves around the misquotation and misapplication of Audre Lorde's 'the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house'. It is, though, learning worn relatively lightly.

I found the 'now' narrative a bit unwieldy and, frankly, uninteresting and while I can see that it's done to show how things play out in the post-university years, it feels like an add-on that isn't quite integrated or organic. Nevertheless, this is a sharp and clear-eyed exploration of troubling events on both sides of the ideological divide portrayed in the novel, with some disturbing but necessary scenes of sexual assault. Smart writing, intelligence, and a sophisticated approach to complex issues made this a thoughtful and gripping read for me.

Thanks to Grove Atlantic for an ARC via NetGalley

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

“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.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

“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”

I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize for UK and Irish small presses.

In the UK this book is published by Tramp Press, a small Irish publisher which aims “to find, nurture and publish exceptional literary talent and … is committed to finding only the best and most deserving books, by new and established writers”.

Its greatest success has been Mike McCormack’s 2016 Goldsmith Prize and 2018 Dublin Literary Award winning Solar Bones (which was also Booker longlisted on its subsequent publication by a UK publisher), and more recently Sara Baume’s “A Line Made for Walking” which was shortlisted for the 2017 Goldsmith Prize (but which was also, unsuccessfully, entered for the Booker Prize by a UK publisher).

As well as their publication success Tramp press are known for two other things: their successful campaign to make Irish presses eligible for the Booker Prize (https://www.tramppress.com/irish-publ... https://www.theguardian.com/books/boo...) – so as to avoid the situation they had with both the above mentioned books where they had to sell UK publishing rights to a UK based publisher; their refusal to accept any manuscripts submitted with “Dear Sirs” or which list only male authors as influences (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...).

The latter is what makes me intrigued as to what caused Tramp to pick up this book (which via its US publisher has already won the Governor General’s Award in Canada.

The book is a morally ambiguous account by Karen, a Canadian studying at a US University.

She starts a relationship with a boy in one of the fraternities – Gamma Beta Chi (but wider known as “Gang Bang Central” for its aggressively sexualised culture and rumoured practices), while at the same time renting a room in a house (“Raghurst”) populated by a group of lesbian feminists. The latter, while captivated by the teaching of Woman Studies/Literature Professor teaching a course on “Women and Myth”, also want to start pushing the theory they are studying into action – starting with shaming the golden boy of GBC who disowns a female student he impregnates and then moving on to a wider attempt to bring down the sexist fraternity culture.

The easily impressionable and morally ambiguous Karen tries to keep a foot in both camps – enjoying both being an insider on the fraternities customs and practices (and being particularly intrigued by the clearly immoral and abusive nature of some of them) and staying in her relationship with her boyfriend, while at the same time flirting openly with the “golden boy”; and yet also being exhilarated by the fiercely intelligent discussions, assured self-confidence, and radical thoughts of her Raghurst housemates, as well as the fiery and confrontational nature of their charismatic ringleader.

The sense is of someone low on confidence as well as privilege (as an “foreign” student she has to work her way through college and faces a future which she will have to shape for herself; who is immediately fascinated by those (both many of the GBC men and the Raghurst men) whose secure economic underpinning (from their family money and connections) leaves them free to either indulge in a slacker lifestyle or to take up a radical activism, in each case free of any ultimate consequence.

The main plot is a rather ill-conceived plan by the housemates, which almost immediately and (at least to the reader) predictably fails.

As the fall out starts to cause repercussions for the GBC members, but more for them (as well as more serious consequences for more innocent participants in an ill-fated GBC party), Karen attempts to maintain her moral ambiguity and neutrality (or perhaps more accurately her two-faced partisanship).

A lot of this book can on one level seem very foreign to a UK/Irish reader. A review in the Irish Independent puts this eloquently

“Take the issue of frat houses and sororities on US campuses, and the webs of privilege, discrimination (both on racial or lineage grounds) and abuse occasionally levelled at them. It is a phenomenon we are blissfully free of in European third-level education, our knowledge of them mostly drawn from Hollywood comedies where jocks crush empty beer cans on their temples and snooty princesses plot to destroy one another. All very odd when viewed from these shores.”

But the wider issues that the book raises are of course far from confined to the US – take for example the case that convulsed Ireland

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018...

The book is shot through (to levels that teeter on pretentiousness) with Greek myth imagery and language – Karen very explicitly drawing on the Professor’s teaching to view everyone and everything in mythical terms as well as seeing a continual line between the activities of say Achilles and his warriors and the behaviour of the Frat boys. Karen herself, with her ambiguous stance across two warring camps, models Helen of Troy (something that is spelled out for us towards the book end, unnecessarily I think). And one of the Greek heroes meets a suitably tragic end.

And in a further link to the Guardian story:

Those brotherly bonds depend on our debasement. The homosocial contract hasn’t changed since the Trojan War. It operates the same way in the military, with sports teams – anywhere men get together in any organised fashion.

I must admit that I preferred the very different literary treatment of the same concept that Pat Barker used in “Silence of the Girls”: making use of deliberate anachronisms (rugby drinking songs, World War I trenches) in an account actually set in the Trojan Wars, to draw the same (but oppositely directed) parallels with the present day.

The book is given a modern-day framing, which the author describes as:

From the start I conceived of this story as a set of events that leaves a lasting and traumatic mark on the novel’s narrator, Karen—so much so that she is compelled to re-visit them, to re-tell the story for herself, fifteen years later (in 2010, when she’s in her mid-30s). In that “present-day” frame, Karen’s long-term relationship has failed and she’s feeling stuck and uninspired in her career; in many respects the past is more lively and real to her than the present. She needs to go back and pick through the wreckage of her college years in order to salvage what was important and let go of the rest, including her own lingering sense of culpability and guilt.

A framing which I found rather unnecessary and also unconvincing – for example the Greek framing of the account makes more sense to me when voiced by the narrator in the 2010s (when she was studying that period and fervently discussing it with her room mates and Professor) rather than as a mid-30s Pinterest/domestic-design-blog photographer.

Tramp Press themselves describe the book on their website as a “lyrical yet eyes-wide-open account of the epic clash between fraternities’ time-honoured ‘right to party’ and young women’s demands for sexual safety and respect”

I would also describe it as a balanced account – in fact if anything the fraternities come out stronger than the young women.

At the risk of turning my review into a fulfilment of Godwin’s Law, I am tempted to compare the book to a Polish author writing a balanced account of the epic clash between Nazi German’s “right to lebensraum” and the Polish nations demands for self-determination and frontier integrity …….. an account in which the main storyline consists of Poles drugging German soldiers and encouraging them to violate the border.

Overall this is a book which is very well and intelligently written but simply did not work for me. Just as the women’s plans were never going to succeed to meet their aims, I could never see how the author's plot devices or her treatment of the subject matter would meet her aims.

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the novel’s present, Karen Huls photographs interiors for a living. As the book begins, she receives news that someone she knew a long time ago has died. This triggers memories of that time and the majority of the book tells the story of those memories.

Here, in the novel’s past, we are in 1990s America on and around a college campus. Karen finds herself in an unusual position when she simultaneously acquires a boyfriend who lives in one of the fraternity houses and moves into shared accomodation with a group of lesbian women who are set on exposing the rape culture that thrives in the fraternity houses. As the story develops, the women decide on a dramatic course of action which has unexpected consequences.

In the novel’s present, Karen covers for her boss at a conference where she gives a presentation.

I find myself very confused as to what this novel was trying to communicate to me. The story is given a mythological perspective as all the girls are involved with a class led by a teacher they all idolise. This course is called “Women and Myth” and one of the women, Steph, describes it as ”…one of those really great fundamental explorations in feminist thought: where do our ideas about masculinity and femininity come from, originally? Sylvia takes us right back to the Greek epic for answers. Heroism. Victimhood. Sacrifice, Stuff like that. We go right back to the source.”

This sets the stage for ongoing discussions of mythology as the GLOs (Greek letter organisations - the fraternity house is Gamma Beta Chi, known to all as Gang Bang Central) in the story look back to the Greek epics. So, you would think, the story thread set in the novel’s present will continue that idea of showing how ideas have developed over the millennia to influence the time of the novel’s past have then gone on to influence the novel’s present. But, unless I have missed something (which is very possible), I cannot see how the storyline in the novel’s present contributes to the book at all. It certainly doesn’t explore any of these themes and, as far as I can tell, it could be removed completely without making any real difference to the book.

The other confusing thing about the book is the message of the main story. It may well be that, like My Dark Vanessa which I read recently, one of the aims of the book is to show that there are a lot of grey areas. But the plan of action that the women decide upon to show the world the truth about the fraternity house seems, once the reader realises what it is, so obviously something that will not work that you cannot believe they would actually go ahead with it. But that’s not the main problem. The main problem is that the story ends up making out that the feminists, those campaigning against the sexual violence of the fraternity house, are the criminals and the “rapists” are their victims.

Looking on Goodreads, the reviews seem mixed and to reflect this confusion over the messaging in the book. I’m glad the book has now been longlisted for The Republic of Consciousness Prize as that means it now has a discussion thread and I am keen to hear what others make of it and why. For now, it feels to me rather messy and confused, but I am willing to have my mind changed on that.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don’t know how you can stand the cognitive dissonance.

The novel begins in 2010 with the narrator learning of the death of one of her fellow university students
 
I haven’t thought of Stephanie McNamara, period, in years. The coincidence seems important in a spooky, literary way, like tragic destiny. Her college isn’t far at all from the Ivy League school where, in 1995–96, my sophomore year, Steph and I and three other girls were housemates.
 
If all this blood is your blood you’ll be dead soon. If not not. Everyone knows the trouble with myth. The trouble with myth is the way it shirks blame. It makes violent death as unavoidable as weather. All that tragic destiny lets everyone off the hook. Some bored god comes kicking up gravel and, just like that, a noble house explodes into carnage.
 
But then, I photograph interiors for a living. Myth is what I do. I mythologize.
 
O soul withered Stephanie, keeper of all our sorrows. You tried again to open your eyes to the dark and this time it must have worked.

I have to say this one didn’t click for me at all.   

The premise of the plot seemed rather undermined by the foolishness of the women’s plan.   The present day sections didn’t seem to add anything.  I am unsure someone who lived in Canada would really be so amused (at a ‘Allo ‘Allo level) at someone speaking English with a French accent. The Greek mythology didn’t really join up for me with the Greek fraternity culture and all felt a bit sub-Donna Tartt (also not a favourite author of mine).  The large parts of the book describing fraternity life was like watching Animal House, but without the jokes (albeit it was eye opening, as a result of the book and some googling, to realise that this culture actually exists in the US outside of Hollywood movie scripts).   And as for the book’s message, I have sympathy with this review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I wouldn’t want to put others off reading this - please read some of the many more favourable reviews - and the author’s message is clearly different and more subtle than how it came across to me.  But a 1 star read from my experience unfortunately.

It does have a wonderful playlist though:

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/a...
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0TW...

The pivotal scene of the novel - The Rut - takes place to the quite brilliant Closer by Nine Inch Nails:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccY25...  

[Tommi · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.5] A novel about rape culture wonderfully underpinned by Greek mythology. What did not appeal to me was all the frat partying, and there was plenty of that in these 300+ pages (although obviously the author criticizes that culture – it was just too much exposure for me). I’ve seen this compared to The Secret History and would agree. Well worth a read even though I would’ve enjoyed it more some years back.

[AMANDA · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm usually always a bit apprehensive about novels set in academia, because I tend to be put off by the ones that are always too academic. I'm not saying I'm not ~intellectual~ enough to appreciate them; I'm just not the sort of reader who picks up a fictional novel and wants to get lectured at about topics I may not even be interested in outside of the novel itself for a good majority of it. But here, the line between intellectually intriguing and tediously scholarly is walked beautifully within Sarah Henstra's writing. Most importantly for me, it left a lot of room for the characters to breathe and develop into a group of fascinating individuals who are all different (and similar in many ways too). Karen, Dyann, Charla, Marie-Jean and Steph were such a compelling group of young women to me, and I loved the little nuances Henstra gave to their personalities and actions that ended up rounding out the novel's story in some really big ways.

This is one of those unique books though where I loved it but didn't particularly enjoy reading it. That's not a knock on the book, the author, or her writing either, it's just the subject matter is so complicated and heavy - and it's never been more relevant.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores rape culture, feminism, Helen of Troy and Greek mythology and it’s extremely interesting.

This would be a good book for a book club discussion as there’s so many parts to this story and great discussion points.

Contains a few difficult and disturbing scenes so be warned. But a good read, written very well and nicely researched.

Four stars.

[Chris Via]

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/20...

[A. H. Reaume · Rating 1 out of 5]

Can you review a book in emojis alone? Here’s my review:

🖕🖕🖕🖕

Seemed funny. Might delete later.

Sincerely,

A former campus feminist activist whose mind was boggled by how a professor could write such an inaccurate portrait of feminists.

(Punch up not down, friends. Also maybe don’t play into the penchant to create false equivalencies with rapists and the people who are trying to dismantle rape culture by creating absurd stories to make the feminists seem worse than the rapists? Not surprised that these rhetorical moves to innocence around rape culture that our culture keeps telling still get critical approval and prizes though. It’s so much easier to not do anything if everyone is at fault!).

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ugh. Surprisingly, I managed to finish this, and most of it in less than one night (I was only on page 66 this morning) because my Netgalley ARC expires today so I had to.

I wasn't enjoying it, so I told myself I would read until page 100, and then quit if I still hated it. It was just vaguely interesting enough for me to want to know what happens, so I kept going, and quickly read through it. I'm giving it 2 stars because I did manage to finish it.

But, God, the people in this book are horrible. Everyone is a god-awful person, except maybe the one guy who we are supposed to hate (at least from the start of the book, as he is portrayed as the first evil-doer). The women in this book are terrible caricatures of the stereotypical "feminazi" (the author's word, not mine) lesbian in the 90s. They are deplorable, evil people. Even the narrator, who I suppose is supposed to be sympathetic, finds out the awful truth behind the major plotline in the story and still manages to defend the actions of the women involved, brushing aside the horrendous things they did.

Also, the writing is pretentious as hell. It's haughty, but not in a subtle way that would add to the book. No, there are just random paragraphs that almost read like someone else wrote them. The first few chapters were especially brutal (even the descriptions of things and places were pompous and overly flowery), but then it got reeled in a bit, thankfully, and made it more palatable.

As someone who nearly minored in classics in college (the only reason I didn't is because they required us to take 2 years of ancient Greek, and I definitely had no desire to do that to myself), the weird attempts at integrating classical style into the middle of chapters (random paragraphs being all "O Dyann, blah blah blah" in the middle of a scene) annoyed me to no end. Also, this vaguely seems like an attempt at retelling Helen of Troy, but then at the end they blatantly call it that, and any subtle parallels to the story are suddenly literal. It shouldn't have to be mentioned by a character (literally at the end of the book, "Oh my God. You're like Helen of Troy." It should be obvious enough without that declaration (and it was), so that was akin to someone explaining why a joke is funny. It completely ruined any cleverness that the plotline had (which was minimal to begin with) as a nod to the Greek classic.

There were also a lot of weird things that I didn't understand, mainly:
- The random scenes at the end of random chapters that were written as though they were a Greek play (why?)
- This isn't really spoiler-y because as far as I know it doesn't really have an impact on anything that happens in advancing the plot, but what was up with the main girl having masterbatory fantasies about her roommate with one of the frat bros repeatedly? That's a common occurrence throughout and it really doesn't make sense to me at all.
- The entire premise of the present day and flash backs. All the present day stuff was essentially pointless, especially the conference. The minor relevance it played in the plotline was not really needed. It was just filler and made things more confusing.
- Occasionally there were weird tense things...in the same paragraph it would go from present to past tense even though it was all being talked about in the same time period.

For a book about rape culture on college campuses, this book does a huge disservice. The author tries to bring up some very controversial and relevant things (e.g., when both a guy and a girl are so intoxicated that neither can really consent in sound-mind, is it rape? She also touches on the pervasive rape culture topic of "asking for it" by drinking too much, wearing revealing clothing, etc). But, any of the legitimate points the author is trying to make about rape culture (in Greek life, especially) are completely overshadowed by the despicable actions of the women in the story, to the extent that the men end up appearing sympathetic, which I don't think is the type of message the world needs right now. This book does not help support victims, help prevent victim-blaming, or contribute to changing the conversation around sexual assault.

[Jessica Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Red Word is like The Secret History if it were about campus rape culture in the 1990s. Rooted in Greek mythology, it is itself a modern myth, as it pits the Gamma Beta Chi fraternity and a group of radical feminists against one another in an epic battle.

Karen Huls is at the center of it all, attempting to belong simultaneously at Raghurst, the house where she lives with four queer feminists, and at the frat house known as “Gang Bang Central.”

This in itself is a far-fetched premise that’s hard to fully buy into. It’s unclear why the women at Raghurst are so readily accepting of Karen. And it’s baffling that Karen, a smart and perceptive person, can so easily exist in a constant state of cognitive dissonance. This is among the book’s few prominent flaws.

Nevertheless it’s a totally gripping story. It’s compulsively readable. As the women at Raghurst plot to take down Gamma Beta Chi—and with it, the misogynist rape culture that it symbolizes—Karen is thrust in the middle of an increasingly destructive battle.

The Red Word forces readers to consider our long-held ideas about masculinity and femininity, and poses some difficult questions: Are the right people suffering the consequences? Is collateral damage justifiable if it’s a means to dismantling systems of oppression and inequality?

This is the kind of book I want to talk about with other people. It’s uncomfortable and timely and provocative. It explores tricky gray areas.

There’s a part of me that worries about its message though. At one point in the book, Dyann, the controversial leader of Raghurst, points out that entertainment is political, that what one enjoys is inevitably a political statement. When I take that theory and apply it to The Red Word, here’s where I arrive: At this important turning point in which the #MeToo movement is front and center, I can’t help but feel that it’s irresponsible and invalidating for a work of fiction about rape culture to present a group of feminists as the instigators. It’s not quite that cut and dried—as mentioned above, there’s a lot of gray area—but it’s something I’m having a hard time getting past. It’s fiction, yes, and as a work of pure fiction I’m down with it. But a novel that depicts timely issues has a greater responsibility that extends beyond fiction.

I don’t know. I really wish I had someone to dissect this with. This book is begging to be discussed. And in spite of my personal hesitations about the message, I found the experience of reading it to be captivating and edifying.

[Aoife · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publishers/author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

TW Graphic sex, assault, excessive drink and drugs, suicide attempts, violence towards women.

A powerful book focusing on a college student’s foray into feminism, women studies, college campus rape culture and the dangerous world of fraternities, and violence against women.

This is a heavy but powerful, important read that only makes the reader think and feel a lot of things bu definitely brings up topics of conversation regarding the issue of victim blaming, slut shaming, and issues of consent.

This book made me feel a lot of things and I really loved seeing Karen wade her way through the world of feminism and women studies while also keeping a grasp on the ‘basic girl’ college experience by dating a frat boy, and going to their parties but as ‘one of the untouchables.’

I loved how this book explored Karen’s two sides and how she was able to weave through these two worlds, though not without any problems.

There are definitely a lot of uncomfortable scenes in this book from sex scenes, assault and also times when Karen ends up slut shaming and victim blame without even realising to. It’s frustrating as a reader to see all the times she stays silent when she could speak out and help a potential victim.

This book is set in 1995, though there are scenes set in present day (which I found a little bit unnecessary most of the time), but it could easily be thought as set right now because the women are suffering from the exact same issues as we are today from slut shaming, harassment, male empowerment and female belittlement. And it’s f-ing infuriating.

I was a huge fan of the thing going on between Karen and Bruce. There was something so openly raw and sensual about their bathroom meetings, and they were made even more chemistry-laden considering they never once kissed. I didn’t blame Karen for a moment about her attraction to Bruce, as honestly I felt it too. And I love how this arc explored that confusing line between Karen loving Bruce but also being aware of the things he partook in as a frat member.

A lot of the things that Dyann, Charla, Steph and MJ took part in were obviously pretty problematic, and definitely were on the extreme side of feminism, do I even dare to say the side of feminazi (a term I typically despise). But I think what happened was a great look at how advocating for change, and a desperation for change, can cause people to do the wrong things, and even illegal things. I’m not condoning their behaviour at all, and it really threw up the questions and the often fuzzy issue of consent.

Things went a little bats**t crazy for me at the end, and I was expecting something tragic but not that. I do think some stuff explored in this book border on the extreme side of things but I also know next to nothing about real college campus life in the US except for media portrayal, so who am I to judge?

This is a really timely book, and definitely one to read following the #MeToo, #TimesUp movements.

[peg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as part of the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize Longlist. It dealt with the very contemporary topics of feminism and rape culture on a university campus. Since my own university days are far behind me, I had much to learn about these topics.

Though the plot seemed rather longwinded, I loved Henstra’s writing, especially her descriptions of the physical surroundings, both at the fraternity house and off-campus
dwellings that some of the characters lived in....one even featured a homemade skate board ramp in the living room! The fraternity house was also well described, both before one of the famous parties held there and the terrible mess the morning after.

The characters were also well drawn. Though none were especially likable, individual temperaments and different levels of maturity were apparent in these college age men and women. We are also given a chance to see how things turned out for the narrator and another female character 15 years after the main event in the book.

I think this book has an excellent chance to be on the RoC shortlist, both because of its themes and writing quality.

[Larissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm struggling to figure out how I feel about this book. It was never going to be a particularly enjoyable read based on the subject matter alone, but I'm not totally clear on the message the author is trying to deliver.

With the main character of the book on both sides of this war between GBC and Raghurst, which I guess is supposed to represent the larger scale battle of men vs. women in society, I find we as the readers are asked to sympathize with the actions of both the frat and Karen's roommates, and maybe the whole point was to be uncomfortable but I didn't love being asked to sympathize with rapists, or the actions of Karen's roommates in their efforts to expose them.

Overall, I just feel like the book said a lot without really saying anything in the end, much like Karen's final essay for Dr. Esterhazy. Placing the story in the 90s makes it seem like the rape culture at colleges is a problem of the past, killing Bruce off was a disappointing conclusion, and the minimal use of jumping between Karen's perspective in college and 15 years later at Steph's memorial offered nothing to the story.

[Lisa Faye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a few reviews already that made the link between this book and "The Secret History", but I have to add one more. If you liked that book, you'll like this one I think! It really illustrates that openness to ideas that comes up for many of us in undergraduate education, but also the ways that ones naivete at that time of life can also make that openness kind of dangerous.

The book opened up a lot of complex feelings about the way rape culture is currently discussed and debated and the difficulties of finding my own stance on so many complex issues around sexual violence... Some of the novel just delved into so much victim blaming and laid bare some very common tendencies to want to fit in and how that creates space for young women (and older women!) to compromise their own values, that it created important discomfort for me.

Unfortunately, my years of studying Greek mythology are well behind me, so I think I missed a lot of that bit of the book. Likely it would have been far more powerful if I was familiar with that bit of lit as well.

[Katie Khan]

Wow. This is a hard-hitting and nuanced look at fraternity/rape culture which speaks to broader gender politics with sensitivity and insight, told from the perspective of Karen Huls looking back as a mature adult on her time on an American university campus in the Nineties.

The author makes extremely interesting choices with this novel; some great, some less great. The beginning is quite slow. At first I was a little baffled by the chapters following the adult Karen — her timeline isn’t particularly scintillating, as she prepares to give a presentation at at a lifestyle blogging conference(?); but what this device does is give the character hindsight on her own experience, and valuable distance. I think many woman have looked back on an interaction with a man and seen it in a different light.

What I loved is the positioning of the main character. On campus, the younger Karen lives in a houseshare with progressive feminists, but dates a frat boy and parties at the fraternity house. She is privy to both worlds, but belongs to neither. She is being educated in feminism and women’s rights by her housemates and on a university course she takes at their urging, called Women and Myth. (The novel is suffused with mythology — chapter headings have haughty classical titles, and references to Phaedra and Helen of Troy abound.) She attends feminist protests with her housemates, and fraternity parties with her boyfriend. She sees value in both cultures and both social groups. It’s a really fascinating take. The tension of the novel ultimately comes from the clashing of her two worlds, put on a collision course by her friends — but it’s so much more sophisticated and clever than that. It makes me think about how we can love a song in our teens, then later sing the lyrics again and realise they’re a bit off. Or how we might feel objectified or even violated by a man, and not realise until after.

Karen is a photographer, often taking photos and with a camera in hand, cast in the role of observer. It’s a highly effective window into this world, providing nuance without judgement. She suffers from some internalised misogyny, but it’s never preached or judged by the author or narrative tone. Instead it just feels . . . human.

I would shelve this book next to The Secret History, Cat’s Eye, Prep, and perhaps the new swathe of #MeToo novels. But this is smart as hell with an explosive plot. I’ll be thinking about The Red Word for weeks.


’Rape’ was a red word, a ravenous word. It was double-edged, the word ‘rape’. It would automatically make me an accuser and [him] an accused.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this climate of the metoo movement , the timing of Sarah Henstra’s debut novel couldn’t be better. The book itself questions such both topics and goes further into other topical subjects such as rape culture in US college fraternities.

The novel starts with photographer Karen receiving the news that one of her college roommates is dead. She then reminisces about her college years in the mid 90’s when she was caught in the middle of two institutions .

The first is a house run by radical feminist Dyann, who wants to expose the machismo culture which dominates fraternities, especially the notorious GBC. Karen is accepted by this group and agrees with their philosophy.

However, to complicate matters Karen is dating one of the GBC members. When Dyann finally manages to bring the GBC antics to the public eye, Karen is placed in an awkward situation.

The Red Word poses a lot of ethical questions: Mainly when is sexual abuse deemed so and when can one be called a victim. I cannot go into any more details as this can spoil the novel’s plot. The book also questions abuser mentality and the lengths people will go to in order to get what they want. Also it does give a picture of how fraternities are run and the amount of crimes that go unnoticed by the law. As my university never had fraternities, I found this fascinating.

Inevitably there will be comparisons to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, the student debauchery, the Greek history symbolism – I am downplaying this, there are A LOT of references to Greek culture in The Red Word, with all chapter headings using Greek terms as well and the inspiring, yet enigmatic professor. Saying that The Red Word goes deeper as it is about actual issues, Henstra tells a story but makes the reader aware of what is happening around us. I admired Henstra for not taking sides in her book both Dyann and the frat gang are equally wrong in the way they execute their ideals and both have their repercussions.

I’ve always believed that literature is supposed represent and reflect our current culture, despite the events of the book taking place more than 20 years ago, the Red Word is a wake up call to people who go to extremes to prove a point but also helps us open our eyes to campus culture in the process.

[Orla Hegarty · Rating 1 out of 5]

This won the Governor General's literary prize for 2018 here in the colonial outpost known as Canada.

A cool topic bro (sis?). Rape culture and stuff, yanno.

But feminism? You've got to be kidding man (woman). There is a scant amount here. Where are the intergenerational feminist consciousness raising groups? The on the ground local action in a community beyond the ivory tower? And what's with all the greek shyte? And the soft porn (with such MEANING).

A 2018 white female professor professes on rape culture in the 90s. And wins awards. Well written (as an english professor is wont to do). But where is the intergenerational sisterhood, sister? Or did this bypass both of us in the 90s?

I am angry about this book. Can you tell?

[Lex · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book so much. It's complicated, it's important and well-written. I couldn't wait to finish the book because I wanted to know how it ended but I didn't want to story to end. The Red Word is about friendships, relationships, college, rape culture, feminism, campus politics, complex realities, heartbreak, and consequences.

*Gifted by ECW Press*