Praise for The Red Word
“The Red Word is the smartest, most provocative novel I’ve read in a long time. Sarah Henstra dives headlong into some murky, turbulent waters—gender politics, campus sexual assault, complicity, moral responsibility—and emerges with a book that’s as shocking as it is essential.” —Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers
“Timely and incisive, young adult author Sarah Henstra makes her adult fiction debut with this tale of collegiate politics and campus rape. Infused with Homerian weight, the novel is appropriately Greek-focused, centering on a controversy between bad boy fraternity house Gamma Beta Chi, the radical feminists of Raghurst, and a young woman caught between the two when a set-up to call out the fraternity's rape culture leads to unintended tragedy.”— Harper’s Bazaar, “14 Books You Should Read This March”
“A timely, telling look at rape culture on campus, Sarah Henstra’s The Red Word boldly goes to the places where memoir can’t but fiction can — and gives way to one hell of a realistic narrative.” —Popsugar
“Provocative . . . [The Red Word] doesn’t shirk anything; nothing is completely clear-cut or binary.” —Brit+Co
“The Red Word is set in the 1990s but speaks directly to the present feminist moment. Sarah Henstra takes us into two worlds: that of Women’s Studies classes and lesbian pagan rituals, and of frat boys and S&M theme parties. As I watched Karen struggle with politics, power, and her own culpability in the fallout of it all, I could not put this book down.”—Darcey Steinke, author of Suicide Blonde and Sister Golden Hair
“Set in the 1990s, The Red Word interrogates the prevailing political preoccupations of that time: gender politics, third-wave feminism, and consent . . . A timely and nuanced dissection of rape culture.” —Booklist
“The most timely of novels.”—Read It Forward
“An aesthetically arresting interrogation of rape culture…timely and brilliant.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Few authors are more qualified to write about university life than Sarah Henstra, a Ryerson English prof by day and novelist by night. In The Red Word. . . Henstra cleverly navigates thorny issues like sexual assault, militant ideology, and the polarization between belligerent college kids and ultra-progressive campus activists.” —Toronto Life
“The Red Word examines rape culture on college campuses with a precision and gentleness that few novels have achieved. . . While The Red Word is entertaining, it’s also a sobering reminder of the horrors inflicted on women, trans, and nonbinary people on college campuses.” —Bitch
“An incisive campus novel . . . [The Red Word] raises essential questions surrounding class privilege, rape, and gendered power dynamics on campus.” —Publishers Weekly
01/01/2018
A Canadian woman named Karen Huls looks back on her turbulent sophomore year at a U.S. university in the 1990s, when she moved into a communal house with several politically provocative feminist and/or lesbian students who were influenced by a charismatic women's studies professor. At the same time, Karen is dating a frat boy while lusting after another in the same fraternity—a suspected sexual predator. Karen tries to keep a foot in both the feminist and the traditional male worlds, and it doesn't go well. Given the age of the characters—college students and beyond—this book takes place in new adult territory, but it reads like a YA novel with explicit sex (Henstra wrote the YA novel Mad Miss Mimic, but this is her first adult novel). The story's tension stems from the protagonist's flirtation with both radical and conservative forces and readers will wonder how these forces will collide. Chapters are named for rhetorical figures of speech, which are fun to research if you're not familiar with them, and the plot molds itself on a Greek drama. VERDICT The tone of this page-turning but inconsistent novel is often light, which is at odds with its serious theme of rape on campus.—Reba Leiding, emeritus, James Madison Univ. Lib., Harrisonburg, VA
2018-01-10
An aesthetically arresting interrogation of rape culture on campus.Like many an epic tale, this is the story of a war between two great houses. On one side there is the fraternity Gamma Beta Chi, also known as "Gang Bang Central." On the other, Raghurst, the home of a collective of radical feminists. Sophomore Karen Huls lands between these two extremes when she wakes up in the backyard Gamma Beta Chi shares with Raghurst and remembers, "I had sex with somebody." The "red word" of the title is rape, "a double-sided axe brandished in a circle over the head." This novel is, among other things, an interrogation of what that word means and whom it hurts. Karen moves into Raghurst, dazzled by the heady discourse of her new housemates and the charismatic professor who serves as their mentor. But she is also an insider at GBC—she's dating one brother and intensely, irrationally attracted to another. As a plan to expose the frat as an epicenter of violent misogyny spirals out of control, Karen is caught in the middle. And she is the first to ask the question that becomes the central theme of this book: "Are the right people suffering?" (e.g., being punished). This is also a question that hangs over Classical tragedy. The women of Raghurst are keenly interested in the ways in which myth shapes reality, and Henstra's text is shot through with antique allusions. The narrative begins with an invocation of the muse. There are references to Artemis and Maenads and Medusa, female figures who pose a threat to men by transgressing the rules that govern women. Helen of Troy becomes a sort of mirror for Karen as she explores the limits and possibilities of female agency in a patriarchal world. And, at moments of high drama, Henstra's language echoes Homer. Dyann Brooks-Morriss, Raghurst's leader, is "battlethirsty" and "redglistening." Bruce Comfort, the frat brother who fuels Karen's fantasies, is given epithets like "heavengoing" and "goldbright."Timely and brilliant.
