REVIEW : TRUE STORY / KATE REED PERRY
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I’ve always been afraid of the dark. And loud noises. And also, somehow, noises that are too quiet and spooky. To give you some idea of my horror threshold: I was 24-years-old when I worked up the courage to read the plot of “The Sixth Sense” on Wikipedia. Not to watch the movie, to read the plot.
Nothing is wrong wrong with me, it’s just, honestly, fuck being scared.
So, last year when Viking started marketing Kate Reed Petty’s debut novel True Story as a genre-bending, somewhat horror-esque novel, I moved my advance reader copy to the bottom of my “to-read” pile very gently, as not to anger it. The book wouldn’t come out for months. I was sure something happier would distract me. This was 2019.
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I have zero interest in baking bread or talking to my relatives over Zoom, so “happier options” during a global pandemic turned out to be somewhat limited for me. Very quickly after burning through my favorite, most comforting books, I sat trapped in my little apartment snacking on stupid store-bought bread, suspiciously eyeing my stack of unread, probably-not-even-scary books. Jesus, grow up, I thought, and finally picked up a horror story.
And True Story is exactly that, but not in the traditional sense.
The book begins after an “epic party” with Nick, a popular, often besotted member of the high school lacrosse team laughing along as two of his teammates brag about raping an unconscious girl while driving her home. She was asleep, they said, and it didn’t even matter; she went to another school. And anyway it was all so funny, like the way you’d pass around some milk that had spoiled: Here, get a whiff of this.
For Alice, the unconscious girl, her present and future are destroyed. She can't remember anything, but the vicious rumors are enough to plaster a type of scarlet A on her chest. The charges against the good ol’ boys are dropped (they couldn’t bear to derail young men with such potential) and Alice finds a new purpose in life: to shrink up, to disappear.
In adulthood, her only contacts are a friend who’s either a saint or a leech, depending on how you look at it, and a terrible, terrible man who does terrible, terrible things to her. By now, Nick is a full-fledged alcoholic so hellbent on doom he ruins his life for a single weekend in a remote cabin to get positively Nicholas-Cage-in-”Leaving-Las-Vegas”-level hammered.
Just as promised, True Story is some real horror shit.
The book switches between thriller, noir, and memoir. Certain sections are fantastical—there are metaphorical and literal ghosts and monsters—and others rely entirely on screenplays, college essay drafts, emails, and phone transcripts to move the story along. The narrator of each passage is continuously bouncing from character to character, and with each inconsistent retelling of the past we understand why it’s so hard for the characters to piece together what truly happened.
But the characters of True Story aren’t telling the truth. Just as any of us would do, they’re telling their own versions of the truth. And for the most part they’re jerks and idiots—and what could be scarier for a young woman than the world taking a jerk or an idiot’s word over her own?
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At the risk of being the person who is no fun at parties: Being a woman can be the absolute worst, which is something I think and talk about a lot. To be clear, womanhood itself is incredible, but the ways others seem determined to ruin it can be…exhausting, to say the least. And I guess that’s why True Story sat on my shelf for so long. I spend a considerable amount of time being creeped out—this guy behind me in line won’t stop breathing down my back, I hope the man following me to my car doesn’t to try to get in like that one time, better not eat a goddamn banana in public or someone will take my picture—and if I let that creepiness tumble around my head for too long I’m sometimes afraid I might explode. Because it’s not fair that I’m scared. A man breathing down my neck won’t remember me by the time he leaves the store. The man who tried to get into my car with me has no idea how helpless that made me feel. A picture of me eating a banana turns me into a bad punchline.
And this is exactly what Reed Petty get’s right: At it’s core, True Story isn’t about a rape, it’s about how the power imbalance between men and women is enough to throw a young woman’s entire life off course. Exactly what happened the night Alice was driven home from the party is barely the point. The true horror is how little the truth actually matters when a man wants to make a woman feel small.
Sadly, any woman knows, even if you’re telling your own true story, it’s hard to be heard. A boy with potential can take anything away from a girl who should have known better than to drink as long as he’s confident his story is true.
Kate Reed Perry’s True Story is out now from Viking.
Laura Jaye Cramer wrote this article. She’ll write more, don’t you doubt her.
