Scan barcode
bbarre's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
jitterbugsnap's review against another edition
4.0
Though I did feel like the first half could be a bit of a slog (i could not care less about fight club but for girls </3 and I wasn't always up for the parody level critiques going on), the writing was great and the back half was well worth it. A great read if you've ever felt like a failure!
helhas3letters's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Dark, hilarious, absorbing, profound, ridiculous. Some brilliantly funny observations on creativity and the theatre industry wrapped up in excellent characters. I only feel slightly let down by the ending because the rest of it was so fantastic.
chelseascurrentread's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
alomie's review against another edition
dark
emotional
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Enjoyed this book, the unhinged woman trope a bit, but honestly, I feel like she actually acts on the mad impulses in parts and by the end it actually feels like she's grown.
siebensommer's review
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
the thing nobody tells you is that suddenly you are a person whose unguarded heart now moves through the world, embedded inside a small and breakable body. You want to stuff it back inside you, almost every day you want to swallow it whole. But you can't, and day by day it gets bigger, more unwieldy.
Making a play is like this. It is only different in that your heart, which is now moving in the world outside of you, does not reside in the body of a singular creature. It resides inside the bodies of a strange troupe of individuals who have signed up for this ritual. Who, by agreement, have become something precious and unnamable. You will love these people savagely, beyond language, for the moment in time in which all of you are bound to each other. If they love you similarly, it will be with similar caveats.
There is no intimacy like the intimacy of breathing life into something together, mingling breath. There's nothing like sharing creation. For the months in which we are assembled, the only people we feel connected to are the ones who joined us inside this world. There might be a legal contract that says we have all agreed to play pretend for eight or ten weeks, after which this will stop. But we are human and we forget how time works- Our entire lives are possible only because we have taught ourselves this trick of lying about time. If we thought about the truth-that every morning we wake up is a morning bringing us closer to death- we wouldn't get out of bed. So we live in this room together with a headlong intensity that approximates
"forever," because these are the moments that make us want to live at all. And so, somewhere between how much we need each other and how singularly we share a world that no one else shares, we forget that we will not always share this one impenetrable world. And because we forget, we love.
[...]
Tell me you don't understand that, and I won't believe you.
oh my god
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Suicide, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Biphobia, Domestic abuse, Eating disorder, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual content, and Sexual violence
ladyedith's review against another edition
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
liked it at some bits, couldn’t wait until it was over at others. i feel like a lot of the plot lines were powerful and interesting, however didn’t come together cohesively.
for example, the blow up with caroline felt so undeserved narrative wise. cass had not yet questioned her enough year, it didn’t really feel rewarding or compelling
kellysings's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
i think i needed to read this book and i’m so glad i did
sophg82's review against another edition
5.0
It's a crazy feeling to read a book and feel like every single component was handcrafted exactly for you. There are two levels to how I want to talk about this book and why I loved it.
LEVEL 1: BASICALLY EVERYTHING
I'm a big fan of Silverman's writing style and the world she created. Every single side character felt so lived-in and real, nobody out of place or unnecessary. I'd read a spin-off about basically anyone (especially jocelyn). Cass was an incredible protagonist and someone I felt very seen by. I love an obsessed-artist type story, and the way she described playwriting really reminded me how I felt about dance and choreography and the act of creating a show. It's embarrassing to draw such a close connection between Cass' off-Broadway play and a literal college student group but I really felt it, what can I say.
"Making a play is like this...your heart, which is now moving in the world outside of you...resides in the bodies of a strange troupe of individuals who have signed up for this ritual. Who, by agreement, have become something precious and unnamable...There is no intimacy like the intimacy of breathing life into something together. There's nothing like sharing creation. For the months in which we are assembled, the only people we feel connected to are the ones who joined us inside this world."
Cass is motivated by desire for success and bitter jealousy of others who have it and running from past mistakes. This is somewhere else I felt seen-the desire to disappear from things instead of facing them, being motivated by jealousy, obsession over being liked. These themes were handled so well, Cass' way of seeing the world being woven into every decision she made. I have a hard time sometimes connecting with the way relationships between women are written in media or talked about online and I've always felt that the way I feel exists somewhere outside that feminine-bond, only-the-girls-get-it, how-I-love-being-a-woman mentality. I found the way I feel here, somewhere in the Cass/Tara-Jean Slater dynamic (which was insane and incredibly written and I could think about forever.) "I want to protect her, and I want to escape her, and I want to kill her and wear her skin, all at the same time and to the same degree."
And I haven't even gotten into the literal main plot...the whole discussion of diversity in media and capitalism and creating diverse stories for the sake of getting awards and the ethics and manipulation of it...Silverman really tapped into my favorite topics of discourse with Caroline the filmmaker and her Andrea Arnold/Tangerine/Moonlight aspirations. This topic was handled so well, staying nuanced instead of hitting you over the head with right versus wrong. I could go on forever, but I won't.
LEVEL 2: THE ENDING CHAPTERS, MY FULL SOB REVELATORY EXPERIENCE
I have literally never cried over a book the way I sobbed over the last couple chapters of this book. I didn't know I was even capable of that. Sometimes a piece of media just reaches you at the exact right time. The majority of the book follows Cass as she flees New York for LA, finding a new creative endeavor and carving out a new life for herself. In the final part, she breaks down again, she leaves everything behind again, and she heads back home to New Hampshire. This is a break from the narrative I have been primed to expect. She settles into monotony, and over time, the demons of jealousy and desperation to be successful and to be liked seem to fade away. And then. In the last chapter she performs this insane play with handmade puppets for an Easter church crowd and I just couldn't stop crying.
The beginning of the play:
"The story of Easter is that, no matter how badly you may fail, you can always just leave...There is a corollary to this story. The unspoken second half. It is: No matter how often and how successfully you leave, you always end up still being yourself when you arrive. This is the part we find much harder to reconcile."
And the end:
"I have started giving myself permission to be really, really ugly...
...I think it's very important to succeed at something.
I used to think it mattered what that was, but I don't anymore.
Now I just think: Dear God, please let me succeed in some small way, regardless of what it is.
And if my own ugliness becomes the extent of my ambition, then...
at least I achieved something
I think I achieved something.
Dear God, please let me have achieved something.
Amen."
I cried and then in the book a woman comes up to Cass and bursts into tears and tells her that the play was the first thing she's seen that feels like it was made for her, and I cried again. I think it's funny how there are multiple moments in this book where people experience a piece of art that moves them to tears unexpectedly without really knowing why, and the same happened to me with the book itself. I love that catharsis.
I guess Silverman tapped into a lot of my current fears--I'm so scared of not being successful, of feeling regret over how I spent my time, of picking a life path and being stuck there forever, of never being creative again, of never feeling fulfilled, of being lonely forever. The ending of this book tapped into all of that and said, it's never over. There are a lot of ways to start over. You never know how your life is going to go. There is no one definition of success, and there are plenty of things to motivate you other than success. There are other ways to be alive.
This is an insane word dump which I hope to consolidate into something better, but I wanted to get all this out there while I'm still feeling it. I'm thankful this book exists. Bye xoxo
LEVEL 1: BASICALLY EVERYTHING
I'm a big fan of Silverman's writing style and the world she created. Every single side character felt so lived-in and real, nobody out of place or unnecessary. I'd read a spin-off about basically anyone (especially jocelyn). Cass was an incredible protagonist and someone I felt very seen by. I love an obsessed-artist type story, and the way she described playwriting really reminded me how I felt about dance and choreography and the act of creating a show. It's embarrassing to draw such a close connection between Cass' off-Broadway play and a literal college student group but I really felt it, what can I say.
"Making a play is like this...your heart, which is now moving in the world outside of you...resides in the bodies of a strange troupe of individuals who have signed up for this ritual. Who, by agreement, have become something precious and unnamable...There is no intimacy like the intimacy of breathing life into something together. There's nothing like sharing creation. For the months in which we are assembled, the only people we feel connected to are the ones who joined us inside this world."
Cass is motivated by desire for success and bitter jealousy of others who have it and running from past mistakes. This is somewhere else I felt seen-the desire to disappear from things instead of facing them, being motivated by jealousy, obsession over being liked. These themes were handled so well, Cass' way of seeing the world being woven into every decision she made. I have a hard time sometimes connecting with the way relationships between women are written in media or talked about online and I've always felt that the way I feel exists somewhere outside that feminine-bond, only-the-girls-get-it, how-I-love-being-a-woman mentality. I found the way I feel here, somewhere in the Cass/Tara-Jean Slater dynamic (which was insane and incredibly written and I could think about forever.) "I want to protect her, and I want to escape her, and I want to kill her and wear her skin, all at the same time and to the same degree."
And I haven't even gotten into the literal main plot...the whole discussion of diversity in media and capitalism and creating diverse stories for the sake of getting awards and the ethics and manipulation of it...Silverman really tapped into my favorite topics of discourse with Caroline the filmmaker and her Andrea Arnold/Tangerine/Moonlight aspirations. This topic was handled so well, staying nuanced instead of hitting you over the head with right versus wrong. I could go on forever, but I won't.
LEVEL 2: THE ENDING CHAPTERS, MY FULL SOB REVELATORY EXPERIENCE
I have literally never cried over a book the way I sobbed over the last couple chapters of this book. I didn't know I was even capable of that. Sometimes a piece of media just reaches you at the exact right time. The majority of the book follows Cass as she flees New York for LA, finding a new creative endeavor and carving out a new life for herself. In the final part, she breaks down again, she leaves everything behind again, and she heads back home to New Hampshire. This is a break from the narrative I have been primed to expect. She settles into monotony, and over time, the demons of jealousy and desperation to be successful and to be liked seem to fade away. And then. In the last chapter she performs this insane play with handmade puppets for an Easter church crowd and I just couldn't stop crying.
The beginning of the play:
"The story of Easter is that, no matter how badly you may fail, you can always just leave...There is a corollary to this story. The unspoken second half. It is: No matter how often and how successfully you leave, you always end up still being yourself when you arrive. This is the part we find much harder to reconcile."
And the end:
"I have started giving myself permission to be really, really ugly...
...I think it's very important to succeed at something.
I used to think it mattered what that was, but I don't anymore.
Now I just think: Dear God, please let me succeed in some small way, regardless of what it is.
And if my own ugliness becomes the extent of my ambition, then...
at least I achieved something
I think I achieved something.
Dear God, please let me have achieved something.
Amen."
I cried and then in the book a woman comes up to Cass and bursts into tears and tells her that the play was the first thing she's seen that feels like it was made for her, and I cried again. I think it's funny how there are multiple moments in this book where people experience a piece of art that moves them to tears unexpectedly without really knowing why, and the same happened to me with the book itself. I love that catharsis.
I guess Silverman tapped into a lot of my current fears--I'm so scared of not being successful, of feeling regret over how I spent my time, of picking a life path and being stuck there forever, of never being creative again, of never feeling fulfilled, of being lonely forever. The ending of this book tapped into all of that and said, it's never over. There are a lot of ways to start over. You never know how your life is going to go. There is no one definition of success, and there are plenty of things to motivate you other than success. There are other ways to be alive.
This is an insane word dump which I hope to consolidate into something better, but I wanted to get all this out there while I'm still feeling it. I'm thankful this book exists. Bye xoxo
vacantbones's review against another edition
5.0
I walked into my local library recently and found myself mesmerized by the cover of We Play Ourselves. Never heard of it before, but picked it up anyway - and here we are now.
I was intrigued by the idea of a teenage, female fight club, but it's amazing how much else happens in this book that speaks to me. We have to think about the meaning of success and how we quantify it, age and the ticking doomsday clock of growing older, how we bounce back from losing it all just when we thought we were becoming who we are meant to be. I find Cass to be frighteningly relatable, and the other characters come with stories that kept me glued to the page. Frankly, I just adored the dynamic between Cass and Jocelyn. So good.
I was intrigued by the idea of a teenage, female fight club, but it's amazing how much else happens in this book that speaks to me. We have to think about the meaning of success and how we quantify it, age and the ticking doomsday clock of growing older, how we bounce back from losing it all just when we thought we were becoming who we are meant to be. I find Cass to be frighteningly relatable, and the other characters come with stories that kept me glued to the page. Frankly, I just adored the dynamic between Cass and Jocelyn. So good.