College secrets
It may take a while to get going, but after 158 pages this campus drama finally explodes into life, writes Aidan Smith
My first mistake before reading this book was to be enticed by the newspaper headline about the contents: “Campus life? It’s all sex, money and mean girls.” I mean, who wouldn’t be?
My second before it popped through the post was to watch the American TV drama about campus life, Tell Me Lies, which doesn’t feature much about money but there are mean girls – and meaner boys – and bags of sex.
My third, wading through the first 158 pages, wondering when it would get going, was to wander over to the bookshelf and pull out my yellowing, lovingly-creased £2.95 copy of Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man – the greatest campus novel with the greatest houseparty set-piece. Every other satire of this precious, self-absorbed world must bow down at the platform boots of Bradbury’s randy, radical monster, Prof Howard Kirk, and brush the mud off his loon pants.
It’s possibly unfair to compare when Kiley Reid’s second novel is a subtler tale. But there’s subtle and there’s taking 158 pages for anything significant to happen.
We’re at the University of Arkansas in the Ozarks, a place of Lubriderm, Vemmo, Groupon and RAS. The last means resident assistant, the role of our heroine, Millie, a student herself in her final year who’s like a pastoral officer for the other undergraduates in her housing block, but kind of working for them, such as when a year’s supply of Chick-fill-a – fried chicken – is the prize for first in line camping overnight outside a new outlet.
Reid’s debut, Such a Fun Age, was another satire, rapturously received, Booker longlisted, with the celebrity endorsement – Reese Witherspoon – that first-time writers dream about, and it had sharp and funny things to say about race and money as a black babysitter was falsely accused of kidnapping the toddler of a wealthy white family.
In Come and Get It Reid pulls the same arrows from her quiver. Mixedrace Millie – a “little ghetto” is one sneer from the dorms – dreams of buying her own home but won’t be able to afford the downpayment on the RA’S modest wage. Enter visiting professor Agatha, fascinated by the snarky gossip of privileged, patronising Southern white girls Jenna, Tyler and Casey which can be heard through the walls of Millie’s room. How’s about if Agatha pays her $40 dollars every time she sits on her floor to eavesdrop because this stuff would fly right into Teen Vogue?
And finally – finally – after the only “excitement” being a deliberately messed-up room to confound the routine Health & Safety checks, the story comes alive.
Millie and Agatha, who’ve spent 158 pages footering around, come alive. Jenna, Tyler and Casey turn their dorm into a witches’ coven. Ancillary mean girl Payton reveals herself to be a kitchen fascist. Kennedy is not a mean girl but the “lonely freak loser” never invited out by the others
who, despite her soppily sloganed cushions and never having heard of Talking Heads, will be the one you’ll root for.
The dialogue is catty, callous, bratty, bitchy, airheaded, unintentionally hilarious and Reid has a terrific ear for it. You might be amazed how quickly you come to count the days until the following Thursday and the next gripping instalment of these epicly frivolous lives, just like Agatha with her tape recorder poised. I was – eventually.
There’s definitely a cool confidence about Reid in making us wait for the twists – bribes, a risky affair, a violent accident. She’s writing about what she knows and doing it well, with her babysitting experiences feeding into Such a Fun Age and her RA experiences being mined for Come and Get It. Just a pity – like being stuck in a meandering sociology lecture on a hot afternoon – that it took so long for me to get it.