We Play Ourselves by Jen Silverman: A review

Writers writing about writers writing is a popular theme with today's novelists. It feels like every second book I pick up to read has a writer as the protagonist. And here we go again with Jen Silverman's We Play Ourselves. Her book is about a struggling playwright named Cass, now thirty years old, who has labored in New York for years trying to get her plays staged. We meet her at what might be her breakthrough moment. She has been named co-winner of a prestigious literary prize and her play will be produced with a talented director in charge. The only fly in the ointment is her co-winner, Tara-Jean, a college student playwright barely out of her teens. Her play is to be produced also.

On the opening night of Cass's play, she can hardly contain her excitement and nervousness. She feels that the performance goes well and at the after-party, she anxiously waits for the publication of the reviews. The most important one, the Times review lands with a thud. The reviewer mercilessly pans her play. Cass is devastated; nevertheless, the performances of the play continue.

Then Tara-Jean's play opens. The reviews come out and it is a triumph! The Times raves and everyone else follows suit. Cass is there for the after-party and she does something so outrageous that it seems unlikely she will ever be able to live it down. Her humiliation is complete and it seems that New York is not big enough for both her and Tara-Jean.

Cass needs to get away and, fortuitously, she has a friend who has a house in Los Angeles. She asks if she can come and stay with him and his partner for a while. The couple welcomes her and she settles in.

Soon she meets the next-door neighbor who is a filmmaker. She is presently making a documentary featuring several young women. Cass becomes involved in that project and, for a while, it appears that this may be her salvation, her way back to respectability. But the filmmaker is fairly unscrupulous in her manipulations of the young women in her documentary and when this becomes apparent, Cass is disillusioned.

Then Tara-Jean turns up. But it seems that she hardly even remembers who Cass is and if she does remember, she doesn't care. She doesn't hold a grudge. The two spend some time together and Cass has a kind of epiphany that allows her to understand the source of her jealousy of Tara-Jean and to begin to put all of that behind her. It helps that she has recently also found a new outlet for her creativity (no spoilers here), one that does not find her competing with Tara-Jean.

This, I thought, was an extremely well-written book. The images of the characters are razor-sharp. They are real people with all their warts but still sympathetic. The plot is well thought out and moves along at a good pace. I was never bored with the narrative and always felt compelled to turn the page and see what happened next. The bottom line is it was a very entertaining book to read. The situations presented were sometimes absurd but the humanity of the characters and their actions always shone through. Silverman, who is herself a playwright, obviously knows the life of the theater and those who work in it very well and she is able to present the intense environment of that milieu to the readers of this, her first novel, in a very readable fashion. I think she, too, may have found another outlet for her creativity.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

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