Nick Drnaso, _Acting Class_

 HAPPY HALLOWE’EN! IF you are seeking something disturbing, you might try this.

Ten people—some of whom are related to or acquainted with each other, but who are for the most part strangers—all sign up for a free acting class at a local community center. All ten are at or nearing an impasse of some sort: an overwhelmed single mother, a grandmother looking after a granddaughter whose mental health is precarious, a couple whose marriage is failing, people in dead-end jobs. Everyone is a bit needy, a bit vulnerable, and each is looking for something different, some sort of jump start into a better or more fulfilling or at least more interesting life.

The class’s teacher, John, leads them into ever more elaborate improv scenarios, some of which involve new locations and turn out to last longer than expected, some of which take on an eerie feel, as though they were a group hallucination, or drug trip, or even as though they were being led to the threshold of some portal to a different reality. The neediest and most vulnerable, as it happens, are given the most powerful; fantasies (if that is what they are) and buy in the most deeply.

Four of the ten opt out, leave the class, but six opt in and board a van for…what? A new life in a new town? A cult? John tells one of the opters-out that he is “just a recruiter.” But for what? Something he calls “the real work.” Are the four missing out of some unutterable transformation? Or have they narrowly escaped some terrible exploitation? We don’t know.

Disturbing. But memorable.

Drnaso’s style in this book aligns closely with that of his last, Sabrina. A color palette that leans heavily on brown, gray, and beige; rectilinear, almost featureless interiors; characters whose eyes, noses, and mouths look a lot like each other’s, leaving the shape and color of their hair as the main clue to their identity. The style is spookily fitting for the story, actuality mapping without much difference onto dream, and good dreams not quickly distinguishable from nightmares.