Summer of Intuitive Longing

Sarah and David, both students at the elite Citywide Academy for the Performing Arts (CAPA), are on the cusp of adulthood, unable to drive but desperate for independence. Their relationship, charged with longing and uncertainty, intensifies over a summer that feels both endless and fleeting. The school, designed to cultivate exceptional talent, isolates them from their pasts and forges new, intense bonds. Their connection is palpable to everyone around them, yet they struggle to define or control it, caught between the innocence of youth and the complexity of desire.

Trust Exercises in Darkness

At CAPA, the students are subjected to a series of trust exercises in their acting class, led by the enigmatic Mr. Kingsley. These exercises, often conducted in darkness, force the students into vulnerable, intimate contact, blurring the lines between performance and reality. Sarah and David's physical connection is cemented during one such exercise, where touch and recognition in the dark become a metaphor for their emotional entanglement. The exercises both open and wound, exposing the students' insecurities and desires, and setting the stage for the power dynamics that will shape their lives.

The Wire Between Them

Despite their closeness, Sarah and David maintain a public distance at school, each orbiting separate social groups while remaining magnetically drawn to each other. Their peers sense the invisible wire connecting them, a tension that is both isolating and electrifying. Their relationship is defined as much by what is unsaid and unseen as by their moments of intimacy, and the secrecy of their bond becomes a source of both strength and pain.

Postcards and Divided Cities

When David travels to England, he sends Sarah daily postcards, their backs filled with dense, effusive writing. The physical distance between them mirrors the social and economic divides of their city—David's privileged neighborhood contrasts sharply with Sarah's modest apartment complex. Their longing is heightened by the obstacles of geography, class, and adolescence, and their attempts to bridge these gaps only underscore their separateness.

Mr. Kingsley's Challenge

Mr. Kingsley, the charismatic and intimidating theatre teacher, exerts a profound influence over his students. Openly gay and unapologetically demanding, he challenges them to deconstruct their egos and confront their deepest emotions. His methods, both inspiring and invasive, blur the boundaries between mentorship and manipulation. Sarah, in particular, is drawn into a special, secretive relationship with him, seeking guidance and validation even as she resists his control.

Hurricane and Heartbreak

A hurricane disrupts the city, delaying the start of school and symbolizing the upheaval in Sarah and David's relationship. Their summer of intimacy ends with a sense of loss and transformation; friendships shift, alliances dissolve, and the return to school brings new roles and expectations. The storm outside reflects the internal storms of adolescence—desire, jealousy, and the pain of growing apart.

The Secret Language of Love

Sarah and David's love is defined by secrecy and misunderstanding. For Sarah, love is a shared secret; for David, it is a public declaration. Their inability to communicate their needs and expectations leads to a painful rupture, as each interprets the other's actions through their own lens. The language of love, silent and ambiguous, becomes a source of both connection and alienation.

Ego Deconstruction and Betrayal

Mr. Kingsley's trust exercises escalate, forcing students to confront their relationships and betrayals in front of their peers. Sarah's friendship with Joelle collapses under the weight of unspoken grievances, and her confessions to Mr. Kingsley blur the line between honesty and performance. The process of ego deconstruction leaves the students raw and exposed, their vulnerabilities laid bare for judgment.

Shifting Friendships, Shifting Selves

As the school year progresses, friendships and identities are in constant flux. Sarah's former closeness with Joelle is replaced by distance and discomfort; David's attention shifts to other girls, and Sarah is left to navigate her own sense of worth. The theatre becomes both a sanctuary and a crucible, where the students test out new selves and struggle to find authenticity amid the pressures of performance.

The Theatre's Demanding Stage

The demands of CAPA's theatre program consume the students' lives, requiring long hours and total commitment. The hierarchy of talent is reinforced through auditions and casting, with musical theatre holding the highest status. Sarah and David, both serious but lacking the requisite skills for stardom, find themselves on the margins, their ambitions frustrated by the realities of competition and favoritism.

Movement, Exposure, and Pain

A new movement teacher, Ms. Rozot, challenges the students to explore their bodies and emotions through movement. The class becomes a site of both liberation and humiliation, as Sarah's pain and longing are brought to the surface. The intensity of adolescent feeling is framed as both a gift and a curse, a necessary part of artistic development that is also nearly unbearable.

The Audition That Changed Everything

During auditions for the school musical, Manuel—a marginalized, seemingly talentless student—stuns everyone with a transcendent performance. His voice, previously hidden, becomes a symbol of the redemptive power of art and the possibility of transformation. The moment unites the students in awe, briefly dissolving the barriers of status and difference.

The Unraveling of Innocence

As the year unfolds, secrets and betrayals accumulate. Sarah's relationship with Mr. Kingsley becomes a source of gossip and suspicion; Manuel's sudden disappearance is shrouded in mystery. The boundaries between teacher and student, friend and rival, are increasingly blurred, and the students are left to navigate a world where trust is fragile and innocence is easily lost.

The Power of Repetition

Mr. Kingsley's repetition exercises, designed to foster authenticity, become a battleground for Sarah and David. Their exchanges, stripped of meaning by endless repetition, mirror their emotional impasse. The exercises expose the limits of language and the difficulty of true connection, as the students struggle to move beyond surface observation to genuine understanding.

The English Invasion

A visiting troupe of English students and teachers arrives, disrupting the established order at CAPA. Their presence exposes the insularity and pretensions of the school, as well as the students' own insecurities. Relationships are tested and reconfigured, and the boundaries between performance and reality are further blurred. The English visitors become both mirrors and catalysts, forcing the students to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves and their community.

Karen's Story: Memory and Truth

Decades later, Karen—once a background character in Sarah's story—offers her own account, challenging the narrative presented in the first half of the book. Through her eyes, the events at CAPA are reinterpreted, and the reliability of memory and storytelling is called into question. Karen's experiences with Martin (the English teacher) and her own hidden traumas reveal the complexities of agency, consent, and the power dynamics at play in their youth.

The Play Within the Play

As adults, Karen and David collaborate on a production of a play written by Martin, now disgraced by allegations of sexual misconduct. The play's themes of guilt, complicity, and the search for redemption echo the unresolved issues of their past. The process of staging the play becomes a means of confronting and re-enacting their own histories, blurring the lines between fiction and reality.

Recognition, Obsession, and Closure

The novel's final section shifts to Claire, a young woman seeking answers about her origins. Her quest leads her to the school and its former teachers, but the truth remains elusive. The story ends with a meditation on the nature of recognition, the persistence of obsession, and the impossibility of fully knowing or being known. The past, refracted through multiple perspectives, resists closure, leaving the characters—and the reader—in a state of unresolved longing.

Characters

Sarah

Sarah is the emotional center of the novel's first half, a talented but insecure student whose longing for connection is both her strength and her undoing. Her relationship with David is marked by intensity and miscommunication, and her interactions with Mr. Kingsley reveal her vulnerability to authority and her hunger for validation. As she matures, Sarah struggles to reconcile her memories with the realities of her past, ultimately becoming both the author and subject of her own story. Her journey is one of self-discovery, marked by pain, resilience, and the ongoing search for authenticity.

David

David is Sarah's counterpart and foil, a boy whose outward confidence masks deep uncertainty. His need for public affirmation clashes with Sarah's desire for secrecy, and his inability to articulate his feelings leads to repeated misunderstandings. As an adult, David becomes a theatre director, channeling his unresolved emotions into his work and remaining obsessed with the formative experiences of his youth. His relationships are shaped by a longing for recognition and a fear of vulnerability, making him both a leader and a lost soul.

Mr. Kingsley

Mr. Kingsley is the powerful, enigmatic theatre teacher who shapes the lives of his students through a combination of inspiration and control. Openly gay and unapologetically demanding, he uses trust exercises and emotional exposure to break down his students' defenses, often blurring the line between mentorship and exploitation. His relationships with students, particularly Sarah, are fraught with ambiguity, and his influence lingers long after they leave CAPA. Kingsley embodies both the promise and peril of artistic authority.

Karen

Karen is initially a background figure in Sarah's narrative, but in the novel's second half, she emerges as a central voice, challenging the reliability of memory and the authority of storytelling. Her experiences with Martin and her own hidden traumas complicate the narrative of victimhood and agency. Karen's journey is one of reclamation—of her story, her voice, and her sense of self. Her perspective reframes the events at CAPA, exposing the limitations and biases of the stories we tell about ourselves and others.

Joelle

Joelle is Sarah's former best friend, whose exuberance and recklessness both attract and repel. Her relationship with Sarah is marked by intimacy and betrayal, and her eventual disappearance from the narrative symbolizes the loss of innocence and the fragmentation of adolescent friendships. Joelle's presence highlights the complexities of female friendship and the ways in which loyalty and rivalry are intertwined.

Manuel

Manuel is a peripheral figure at CAPA, often overlooked and underestimated. His stunning audition for the school musical reveals a hidden talent that momentarily unites the students in awe. However, his subsequent disappearance and the rumors surrounding his relationship with Mr. Kingsley underscore the dangers of invisibility and the consequences of unchecked power. Manuel's story is a haunting reminder of those left behind by the narratives of the privileged.

Martin

Martin is the English teacher whose arrival at CAPA disrupts the established order and whose later downfall reframes the events of the past. His relationships with students, particularly Karen, are marked by charisma, manipulation, and abuse of power. As an adult, Martin's attempt to stage a comeback through his play forces the characters to confront the unresolved traumas of their youth and the complexities of consent, memory, and accountability.

Erin O'Leary

Erin is the school's star performer, admired and resented in equal measure. Her effortless success and social isolation highlight the hierarchies of talent and popularity at CAPA. Erin's presence serves as a benchmark against which other students measure themselves, and her interactions with David and Sarah reveal the costs of ambition and the loneliness of exceptionalism.

Pammie

Pammie is a Christian student whose faith sets her apart in the secular, competitive world of CAPA. Often mocked or dismissed, she nonetheless demonstrates a quiet strength and capacity for forgiveness. Pammie's journey reflects the challenges of maintaining integrity and compassion in an environment that prizes performance over authenticity.

Claire

Claire appears in the novel's final section as a young woman searching for her origins. Her quest to uncover the truth about her birth mother and her connection to CAPA serves as a coda to the main narrative, highlighting the persistence of obsession, the limits of recognition, and the enduring impact of the past. Claire's story underscores the novel's central themes of memory, identity, and the search for closure.

Plot Devices

Unreliable Narration and Shifting Perspectives

The novel's structure is built on the instability of memory and the subjectivity of experience. The first half, presented as Sarah's narrative, is later reframed and challenged by Karen's account, which exposes omissions, distortions, and alternative truths. This device forces the reader to question the reliability of any single perspective and highlights the ways in which stories are constructed, revised, and contested over time.

Metafiction and the Play Within the Play

The novel is deeply self-referential, with characters staging plays that mirror their own experiences and traumas. The boundaries between fiction and reality are constantly blurred, as the characters use performance both to escape and to confront their histories. The inclusion of a novel within the novel, and a play within the play, underscores the recursive nature of storytelling and the impossibility of definitive truth.

Trust Exercises and Repetition

The trust exercises and repetition drills used in Mr. Kingsley's acting class serve as both literal and symbolic explorations of vulnerability, communication, and power. These exercises expose the students' deepest fears and desires, while also highlighting the limitations of language and the difficulty of genuine connection. The motif of repetition—both in dialogue and in the cyclical nature of relationships—reinforces the themes of obsession and unresolved longing.

Foreshadowing and Retrospective Revelation

The novel is rich in foreshadowing, with early events and details taking on new significance as the story unfolds. The later sections, particularly Karen's narrative, reveal hidden motivations, secrets, and betrayals that recast the meaning of earlier scenes. This retrospective structure invites the reader to continually reassess their understanding of the characters and events.

The Power Dynamics of Art and Authority

The relationships between students and teachers, particularly Mr. Kingsley and Martin, are fraught with ambiguity and danger. The pursuit of artistic excellence is shown to be inseparable from the exercise of power, and the costs of ambition are measured in both personal and collective suffering. The novel interrogates the ethics of mentorship, the allure of charisma, and the vulnerability of those who seek approval and belonging.

Analysis

is a daring, layered exploration of adolescence, power, and the slipperiness of truth. Susan Choi uses the microcosm of a performing arts high school to examine how authority, desire, and ambition shape young lives—and how the stories we tell about those years are always partial, contested, and haunted by what remains unsaid. The novel's shifting perspectives and metafictional structure force readers to confront the unreliability of memory and the ways in which trauma and longing are both performed and concealed. At its core, the book is a meditation on the search for authenticity—in art, in love, and in self-understanding—and a critique of the systems that exploit vulnerability in the name of greatness. Choi's narrative asks us to consider who gets to tell the story, whose version is believed, and what is lost in the translation from experience to narrative. The result is a powerful, unsettling work that lingers long after the final page, challenging us to question not only the characters' truths, but our own.

Last updated: May 6, 2025