Review - The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

Title: The Writing Retreat*

Author: Julia Bartz

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Rating: 3 stars / 5 stars

Favorite Quote: “[I]f you were a woman, then you had a job to do, and that was to pretend to love everyone else walking all over your body, leaving imprints on your face. You were supposed to pretend to crave it, to beg for more.” Bartz, Julia. The Writing Retreat. Atria, 2023. e-book ed.

Review: The Writing Retreat follows the main character, Alex, as she joins a writing retreat in the secluded home of her elusive favorite writer. She is joined by other young, female writers, including Wren, a former friend turned enemy whose friendship and sexual history with Alex lay the foundation for their tense reunion at the retreat. But quickly all the young writers learn that all isn’t as it seems, and no one is quite who they seem to be.

There’s a lot that isn’t working with this book, but let’s start with what is. The topic? The concept? Immaculate. All the vibes of dark academia in a world where creatives are (mostly) forced to live lives that don’t quite align with their creative pursuits. And then they’re given the opportunity of a lifetime to become artists - to become published authors - at the invitation of a literary icon. Sign. Me. Up. And she markets herself as a feminist icon too - early on challenging a male author who stole the work of his college girlfriend.

The author also deals quite well with the sometimes confusion nature of sexuality and gender, and how female friendships are equal parts necessary and oftentimes made complex by a world that hates women.

So that’s what’s working. 

And then there’s what’s not. 

First and foremost, this book deals clunkily (at best) with the issue of race. There’s one Black character who is often the canvas upon which the book tries to paint its “allyship.” (Alex notes upon meeting Keira her own awareness of being in primarily white spaces.) Taylor [SPOILER ALERT], who turns from aspiring writer to secret mistress to the murdering author Roza, makes a “joke” about how finishing Keira’s book (when everyone thought Keira was dead) would be an act of “appropriation.” There’s also a slave joke. As a white woman myself, I am not the person who can judge definitively what is racist and what isn’t, but slave jokes written by white authors almost always are, and I can say that the other instances certainly don’t appear to be an appropriate handling of the topic by a (presumably) white author. 

The other aspect of this book that isn’t quite working is the pacing. The first portion of the writing retreat - the build up where the writers are first beginning their novels and then noticing the oddities of the house - works really well. And then Holly goes missing. And suddenly everyone is being held hostage, being forced to churn out their own works under awful conditions, and Taylor and Roza are evil. Then people die. There’s more hostage-holding. And then there’s the escape. 

It somehow moves too quickly and too slowly all at once. 

About that Quote: This book did offer quite a commentary on what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a sapphic woman, and what it means to be a woman trying to succeed. It then does quite a bit of work to subvert the expectations for women both historically and contemporarily. This quote offers the insight of what the women in the book were facing, as well as the women in Alex’s book. 

Incomplete List of TWs: murder, child ab*se, racism, demon possession