Prima Facie

August 1, 2023

A tough-minded young woman who attended Cambridge on full scholarship, Tessa Ensler has triumphed at the bar, winning cases that include freeing men accused of rape or sexual assault. Then she kicks off a lighthearted relationship with a coworker from a posh family and ends up being raped herself. Does she take the stand, knowing full well the law is stacked against the victim? The author's adaptation of her Olivier Award-winning play. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 23, 2023
In this bracing if somewhat stilted debut, playwright Miller adapts her Olivier-winning play about London criminal defense barrister Tessa Ensler, whose fierce faith in the law is challenged after she’s raped by a colleague. Though Tessa prides herself on being a champion for underdogs like her older brother, Johnny—whose juvenile run-ins with the justice system have tainted his professional prospects—she has surprisingly few qualms about defending men accused of sexual assault. Her favored tactic in these cases is superficially sympathetic but ultimately devastating cross-examinations of her client’s female accusers. One night, after a bout of heavy drinking, Tessa is assaulted by a colleague with whom she’s been carrying on an affair. As she wrestles with the same conundrums faced by the women she’s eviscerated on the stand, the novel hits its stride on the way to a climactic courtroom showdown. Miller’s narrative more than succeeds as an impassioned piece of advocacy that illuminates the tilted playing field facing sexual assault survivors. Without the immediacy of the stage, however, it can sometimes feel less like a novel than a brilliantly argued legal brief. Miller provides plenty of food for thought, but she doesn’t quite nail the transition from stage to page.

November 1, 2023

DEBUT Tessa is a successful criminal-defense barrister with a winning record of defending men accused of sexual assault. A horrific event puts her on the other side of the table in Miller's compelling debut novel that adapts her Laurence Olivier--winning play of the same name, which earned four Tony nominations when it moved from UK stages to the U.S. Tessa has a consensual late-night sexual encounter with a colleague, which leads to a subsequent dinner date where both consume plenty of alcohol. They retire to Tessa's apartment and have consensual sex. Later, Tessa wakes feeling ill and retreats to the bathroom where she is sick. Her colleague carries her back to bed and when he tries to initiate sex again, she refuses, pushes him away and struggles. He holds her down and rapes her. Horrified, Tessa files charges against him, even knowing that women are often the losers in sexual-assault cases. Miller successfully captures the mental anguish and confusion of the assault itself and the horror of reliving the events in the courtroom. VERDICT Tessa is a compelling character who confronts the patriarchy. Recommended for all libraries.--Joanna M. Burkhardt

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2023
Playwright Miller delivers this powerful legal drama based on her 2023 Olivier and Tony award-winning play about consent and sexual assault. Tess Ensler, a top London criminal defense attorney, worked hard to transcend her working-class upbringing in a profession dominated by "barristers born into the law." The law is her life. She staunchly believes the system can deliver justice, especially for those lacking privilege. But after being raped by a colleague, Tess' faith in herself and the law shatters. Suddenly she's a victim, like the women she cross-examines in court. Miller tells the story in monologue, skillfully capturing the wrenching shift in Tess's self-sense following the assault. Wit, assurance, and logic give way to doubt, hesitancy, and bouts of panic. Seeking justice, Tess confronts a system ill-suited to the "lived experience of rape" and a defense barrister digging for inconsistencies --as Tess has done herself--to undermine her testimony. Retraumatized, her mind in turmoil, she somehow manages to reclaim her voice and speak out against a "law of sexual assault spin[ing] on the wrong axis."

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Starred review from November 15, 2023
A London lawyer's faith in the legal system is tested after she's sexually assaulted. As a criminal defense attorney, Tessa Ensler is often called upon to argue on behalf of people accused of rape. Possessed of an acute knowledge of the law and a brilliant mind (and, as she comes to realize, the default upper hand), Tessa routinely wins acquittals for her clients. She never resorts to dirty tactics such as suggesting the alleged victims "asked for it" by wearing revealing clothes; she simply teases out inconsistencies, contradictions, and other flaws in their accounts, enough to plant a seed of doubt in the jurors' minds. Her role, as she sees it, is to tell the best version of a defendant's story; the prosecutor is tasked with doing the same for the plaintiff. Then, it's up to the judge to decide which narrative is more plausible. To Tessa, the law, for all its imperfections, is truly a force for justice. If one of the clients she's successfully defended is indeed found guilty, well, the fault lies with the prosecutor for dropping the ball. Based on Miller's play of the same name, this novel considers the chasm between what Tessa terms "the legal truth" and the actual truth. Can a system built by and for wealthy white men really do right by anyone who doesn't fit that mold? Tessa's answer changes after an ill-fated date with a fellow barrister. Back at her apartment, in a violent encounter rendered in horrifyingly vivid detail (that's a compliment to Miller, not a critique), he forces himself on her, ignoring her protestations and pinning her down. More than two years later, the resulting trial begins--a chance for Tessa to not only have her day in court, but also to assess the effectiveness of the institution she upholds. While the opening chapters can drag (since we know where the plot is headed), the pivotal scene hits like a ton of bricks, evoking in full the physical and emotional horror of sexual assault and its lasting effects on the victim. A rawly moving debut filled with insights into the legal system and its shortcomings.

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August 8, 2023
Prima Facie, Suzie Miller’s debut novel (adapted from her internationally award-winning 2019 play of the same name), is a relentless, arresting story of a criminal defence barrister whose passionate faith in the legal system is uprooted when, as a sexual assault survivor, she experiences it from the other side. Despite Tessa Ensler’s working-class background, she has forged a successful law career in a climate of often snobbish competition and made a name for herself through hard work rather than family wealth or privilege. The breathless energy and driving intensity of Miller’s play translates into a novel of punchy, sometimes fragmented prose tracing Tessa’s heartrending transition from the confident, slick professional who initiates us into the thrills and skills of her courtroom life to a traumatised (yet still strong) woman whose internal monologue becomes a barrage of self-criticism and doubts. Miller effortlessly and powerfully steers us back and forth in time—before, during and after the rape—and we see the inside of the courtroom as Tessa does, from both the bar table and witness box. The novel is intimate in every sense—narratively, sexually, emotionally and dramatically—and portrays Tessa’s shifting beliefs about the law and its capacity to enact real justice, from a raw, first-person perspective. Despite being somewhat peripheral, her relationships with her family and closest friends are drawn with compelling warmth and truth, offering a redemptive balance to the novel’s more harrowing aspects. Like the play, the book grabs you forcefully from the opening words, refusing to release you until the final pages.