After 22-year-old Kate Quaile is raped by someone she knows at a party at the London home of her friend Max Rippon's family, she procures a morning-after pill but is unable to do much else. She watches the deadline for her application to a master's program in filmmaking come and go. She begins to drink more and filches her roommate's prescription pills, and she has self-destructive impulses that include pouring boiling water onto her hand. Kate vows to tell no one about the rape because "the horror of being disbelieved was worse than the horror of bearing it alone."
This movie-of-the-week-style recap fails to convey the originality of What Red Was, the debut novel from Rosie Price, who is wise beyond her 26 years when it comes to comprehending the experience of trauma and its fraught aftermath.
Kate finds herself taking tentative steps toward a new romance and seeking comfort from Max's mother, a celebrated film director who also knows Kate's attacker. Says Kate's new boyfriend about her relationship with the Rippon family, "They treat you like one of their own." Yes, but is that necessarily a good thing?
What Red Was is about both dealing with pain and the limitations of even the most well-meaning person's efforts on behalf of the sufferer. Although the book's impetuously roving point of view is disorienting and prevents readers from fully knowing Kate, they will nevertheless leave the novel understanding more than they did--about loyalty, about survival--before they cracked its cover. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer