Foul is Fair

December 16, 2019
A young woman chooses “avenger” over “victim” or “survivor” in this take on Macbeth for the #MeToo era by Capin (The Dead Queens Club). After 16-year-old narrator Elle Khanjara is drugged and raped by a group of prep school boys at an L.A. party, she determines to handle the situation herself. Requesting that her parents not contact the authorities, she asks her father, a connected plastic surgeon, to facilitate her transfer to St. Andrew’s Prep, the boys’ school. Taking the entitled young men out herself would be too easy. Elle, now going by her middle name, Jade, plans to bring them down from within, and she launches a scheme devised with her “coven,” close friends Mads, Jenny, and Summer. Nothing short of murder will do, but falling for the boy she’s set up to take the fall isn’t part
of the plan. Elements of
the coven’s elaborately staged scheme are hard to swallow, and a lack of character depth may blunt the impact for some, despite intersectional inclusivity across secondary characters. Still, Capin’s twisty, blood-soaked take on Shakespeare’s play is a propulsive, white-hot juggernaut of vengeance that packs a viscerally satisfying punch. Ages 14–up. Agent: Sarah Burnes, the Gernert Co.

Emily Lawrence narrates the first-person story of Elle Khanjara. On her sixteenth birthday, Elle crashes a prep school party with four of her girlfriends. While there, she is drugged and gang-raped by four lacrosse players. Afterward, Lawrence's voice reflects Elle's anger in tones that range from cruel sarcasm to cold and calculating. Determined to exact revenge, Elle changes her appearance and her name. Upon infiltrating the school, she and her crew take the first steps in their plan to murder the rapists. Lawrence captures the building suspense that is the driving force of this novel. Her voicing of Elle's memories of the rape is chilling and unapologetic. This is not a gentle listen; neither the narrator nor the author spare listeners from the story's emotional intensity. S.W. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine