The battle of the sexes goes to college in this nervy debut novel by a powerfulnew voice.
A smart, dark, and take-no-prisoners look at rape culture and the extremes to whichideology can go, The Red Word is a campus novel like no other. As her sophomoreyear begins, Karen enters into the back-to-school revelry - particularly at a fraternitycalled GBC. When she wakes up one morning on the lawn of Raghurst, a house ofradical feminists, she gets a crash course in the state of feminist activism on campus.GBC is notorious, she learns, nicknamed 'Gang Bang Central' and a prominentcontributor to a list of date rapists compiled by female students.
Despite continuing toparty there and dating one of the brothers, Karen is equally seduced by theintellectual stimulation and indomitable spirit of the Raghurst women, who surpriseher by wanting her as a housemate and recruiting her into the upper-level class of acharismatic feminist mythology scholar they all adore. As Karen finds herself caughtbetween two increasingly polarised camps, ringleader housemate Dyann believes shehas hit on the perfect way to expose and bring down the fraternity as a symbol ofrape culture - but the war between the houses will exact a terrible price.
The Red Word captures beautifully the feverish binarism of campus politics and theheadlong rush of youth toward new friends, lovers, and life-altering ideas.
Withstrains of Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot, Alison Lurie's Truth andConsequences, and Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, Sarah Henstra's debut adultnovel arrives on the wings of furies.
'Sarah Henstra's The Red Word will get you fuming, laughing, cheering, and most of all, thinking.' - Cosmopolitan
'The Red Word is the smartest, most provocative novel I've read in a long time.PGW Winter 2018 OmnibusSarah Henstra dives headlong into some murky, turbulent waters-gender politics,campus sexual assault, complicity, moral responsibility - and emerges with a bookthat'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 debutwith this tale of collegiate politics and campus rape. Infused with Homerian weight,the novel is appropriately Greek-focused, centering on a controversy between bad boyfraternity house Gamma Beta Chi, the radical feminists of Raghurst, and a youngwoman caught between the two when a set-up to call out the fraternity's rape cultureleads to unintended tragedy.' - Harper's Bazaar, '14 Books You Should Read ThisMarch'
'A timely, telling look at rape culture on campus, Sarah Henstra's The Red Wordboldly goes to the places where memoir can't but fiction can - and gives way to onehell of a realistic narrative.' - Popsugar
'Set in the 1990s, The Red Word interrogates the prevailing political preoccupationsof that time: gender politics, third-wave feminism, and consent...A timely andnuanced dissection of rape culture.' - Booklist
'An aesthetically arresting interrogation of rape culture...timely and brilliant.' - KirkusReviews
