Book Review: True Story, A Novel | Kate Reed Petty

Complicated, thought-provoking, and original—True Story by Kate Reed Petty is one of those books that takes a bit to unpack after finishing it. This book is nothing like what I expected, in a good way. A truly unique look at the complexities of truth, sexual assault, rumors, trauma, and the lasting impact of a story told so many times, it’s hard to know whether it actually happened.

About the Book

Tracing the fifteen-year fallout of a toxic high school rumor, a riveting, astonishingly original debut novel about the power of stories—and who gets to tell them

2015. A gifted and reclusive ghostwriter, Alice Lovett makes a living helping other people tell their stories. But she is haunted by the one story she can’t tell: the story of, as she puts it, “the things that happened while I was asleep.”

1999. Nick Brothers and his lacrosse teammates return for their senior year at their wealthy Maryland high school as the reigning state champions. They’re on top of the world—until two of his friends drive a passed-out girl home from of the team’s “legendary” parties, and a rumor about what happened in the backseat spreads through the town like wildfire.

The boys deny the allegations, and, eventually, the town moves on. But not everyone can. Nick descends into alcoholism, and Alice builds a life in fits and starts, underestimating herself and placing her trust in the wrong people. When she finally gets the opportunity to confront the past she can’t remember—but which has nevertheless shaped her life—will she take it?

An inventive and breathtaking exploration of a woman finding her voice in the wake of trauma, True Story is part psychological thriller, part fever dream, and part timely comment on sexual assault, power, and the very nature of truth. Ingeniously constructed and full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the final pages, it marks the debut of a singular and daring new voice in fiction.

Reflection

This is one of the strangest books I’ve read, but in a good way! When the book was described as “part psychological thriller, part fever dream” I didn’t put much stock in it. It sounded like a pretty straight-forward suspense/drama about the aftermath of a sexual assault allegation and the damage it caused to the young woman who survived it.

Nothing about this book is straight-forward, and that will become clear almost as soon as you begin reading it. Fever dream is sort of the perfect way to describe it. The story takes a lot of turns that I puzzled about obsessively. Often, I paged back to double check the things I read and make sure I hadn’t missed anything! At the same time, the writing itself was quite unique. The story unfolds in the midst of an unexplained mix of screenplays and “found” narrative, first person-accounts, second-person narratives, and jumps in time. The chapters or sections themselves are completely different lengths. Everything from the font, typography, and even the use of quotation marks varied wildly throughout the book.

The story focuses primarily on two characters and spans two decades. Alice is the private school girl who got drunk at a party one night in high school, was found on her front porch by her parents, and was later the subject of rumors about a sexual assault that she doesn’t remember.

Meanwhile Nick is a lacrosse player who struggles to fit in with his friends, who are more experienced than him, more brazen than him, and party harder than him. So when two of his friends tell the story about driving Alice home and hooking up with her, he believes them.

As the rumor spreads, Nick ends up in a tough spot. His friends claim it was just a story, exaggerated for entertainment and not true. Meanwhile his crush Haley insists it is true and that the girl is traumatized. Forced to choose his friends or Haley, Nick backs his friends and the rumor eventually fades from memory as Nick and his friends finish their Senior year and head to college.

Meanwhile Alice has a complicated life that unfolds in bursts. We learn about her high school experience, about a support group of sorts she joined, about college, about a relationship she’s in as an adult, and eventually, about her career as a ghost writer for other people’s work. She is unable, even well into adulthood, to ever tell her own story.

Nick descends into extreme alcoholism through his adulthood, but he has hope and is trying to get his life back on track. And then, though they never actually met, Nick’s story and Alice’s start to creep back together, and the truth of what happened will come out.

I don’t really want to say much more about this book, other than that I advise you to stick with it. I was at times so immersed in the story, I couldn’t tear myself away from the pages. Other times I questioned where the story was headed and if I missed something.

All I’ll say is that the ending is brilliant and truly thought-provoking. I finished this book days ago and I can’t stop thinking about the nature of a rumor, a story, the truth, and healing. This is a fascinating and brilliant story that shows the talent this writer brings to what will likely be a promising career. I certainly can’t wait to see what she will do next!

I don’t think this book will be for everyone, but it will speak to many readers. The assault itself isn’t graphic, but it looms over the story in the absence of details that come with a lapse in memory. The book itself is disorienting, mirroring the way these situations feel in life. Which version of a story is true? Will we ever even know? And what happens when we doubt our own truth in the wake of others’ narratives?

Original and complex. A must-read for the reader who thinks they’ve seen it all.