The Nature of Things

  Writers writing about writers writing is a popular theme with today's novelists. It feels like every second book I pick up to read has a writer as the protagonist. And here we go again with Jen Silverman's We Play Ourselves . Her book is about a struggling playwright named Cass, now thirty years old, who has labored in New York for years trying to get her plays staged. We meet her at what might be her breakthrough moment. She has been named co-winner of a prestigious literary prize and her play will be produced with a talented director in charge. The only fly in the ointment is her co-winner, Tara-Jean, a college student playwright barely out of her teens. Her play is to be produced also. On the opening night of Cass's play, she can hardly contain her excitement and nervousness. She feels that the performance goes well and at the after-party, she anxiously waits for the publication of the reviews. The most important one, the Times review lands with a thud. The reviewer m...