New book set at UA examines class, reflexive privilege

A few years ago there was a highly acclaimed American novel that I simply didn’t get.

It was competently written, and the story was plausible and scaled to human proportions. But it felt more like a Lifetime movie treatment than an authentic investigation of how people live in the world. The characters lacked dimension and made frictionless speeches that sounded nothing like the way their real-life counterparts would talk. It was, to my mind, an average novel by a promising writer who had failed to produce a work that was original or interesting.

I understood why it was a bestseller, for it was the sort of book that becomes a bestseller in this country. It had a social agenda that made it attractive to talk-show bookers and people looking for something meaty (but not too meaty) to discuss in their book clubs. What I didn’t understand was why it was being so well-reviewed.

I alluded to the book in this column, but I didn’t mention it by name. Two writer friends immediately emailed me — they knew the book I was talking about. Over the next couple of weeks, a couple more literary-minded friends asked me about the bestseller I was alluding to. When I told them they shook their heads in agreement. The novel wasn’t all that.

None of this is the fault of the novelist. No one is more aware of a book’s shortcomings than the one who writes it. (I will forever love Stephen King for acknowledging in what might be his best book, “On Writing,” that he understands all the criticisms leveled at his work and agrees with much of it and is simply doing the best he can.) I think a lot of it has to do with the way we write about books and writing, and how some critics feel compelled to hyperbolize in reviews (likely due to the need to draw clicks or other validating evidence of attention to their work).

It’s more fun to pan something than to praise it, and more fun to praise it than to work through how things might have been better or worse and why we need to think about things we consume. There are a lot of people in my business who think arts criticism is a waste of time and space. It’s not just the readers who will advise you to keep your opinion out of the review these days.

ONE OF THOSE TIMES

And sometimes a critic is tempted to follow that advice. This is one of those times.

Kiley Reid’s “Come & Get It” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $29) is sure to be of interest to Arkansas readers because it is set in Fayetteville, mostly in a (fictional) dorm at the University of Arkansas, which she writes has a “screen-saver, campus-visit, Scholastic Book Fair beauty to it.”

Reid lived in Fayetteville after graduating from Marymount Manhattan College, working as a barista at now-defunct Blackboard Grocery. She started writing her 2019 novel “Such a Fun Age” in Arsaga’s coffee shop on the UA campus before heading to Iowa for her master of fine arts degree.

“Such a Fun Age” was a bestseller and a critical success. It was long-listed for the Booker Prize. It manages to be a serious investigation of the casual racism of cultural (liberal) elites and white privilege and a bouncy, soapy beach read. It is an accessible novel with a barb, with a tone similar to that of Cord Jefferson’s film “American Fiction.”

While it isn’t perfect — Reid’s dialogue often sounds like it’s keyed to a romantic comedy someone will inevitably make from her material — it is provocative and

fresh, an especially good debut novel.

Reid’s follow-up is also a comedy of manners that examines reflexive privilege, though this time the target is more class than race. Or not even class — it’s got a lot to do with money.

A FEATURELESS TOWER

My trips to the University of Arkansas have never included visits to student housing, but my guess is Belgrade dormitory is based on a real housing facility. Every land grant university seems to have one like it, a featureless tower less desirable than the other dorms that serves as kind of a catchall for students who applied for better lodging, out-of-state residents who didn’t know better, and the victims of administrative foul-ups.

Agatha Paul is a visiting professor in her late 30s, smarting from a breakup with a beautiful but financially feckless dancer, who arrives at UA to research her next book about the financial lives of young people. With the help of Millie, a resident adviser at Belgrade, Agatha sets up a meeting with a group of undergraduate girls to talk about their spending habits, allowances (“practice paychecks,” one calls them) and attitudes toward money.

Agatha, a bit of a hustler, sees these girls (none of whom consider themselves as Belgrade “losers”) as a potential resource. Soon she’s listening to their conversations while sitting on the floor of Millie’s bedroom — listening through the wall. It’s more research for her book and, she soon discovers, she can change the names and rewrite her notes as online “Money Diary” pieces for Teen Vogue. She pays Millie $40 for each session, but the girls aren’t asked for consent and have no idea their lives are being used as fodder for the column.

EMBARK ON AN AFFAIR

Another sketchy decision Agatha makes is to embark on an affair with Millie, though this is somewhat mitigated, in her mind at least, by the fact that Millie isn’t her student.

If Agatha comes off as careerist and dismissive of ethical boundaries, Millie is a sweetheart, an earnest 24-year-old returning to college after taking a break to care for her ailing mother, determined to put some money away to save for the tiny house she believes might be within her grasp if she does everything perfectly for the next two or three years. She likes her job as an RA, though a lot of it feels like she’s essentially an underpaid servant. (She gets a salary of $250 a month.)

The third main character is naive undergrad Kennedy, who feels excluded even by her suitemates and whose touching ambition is to make one friend during the semester.

Reid has an awful lot going on here, some of it potentially rich. Millie is not a child, but Agatha is a decade and a half older and, if not predatory, at least on the rebound and in a vulnerable place herself. Millie’s charges indulge in some of the offhand racism that announces their privilege — one of them remarks how Millie, a Black woman, can be “a little ghetto” and imitates her walk. There is the question of what it means to be thrown together with strangers and expected to form some sort of community. And more than a couple of the characters are affected by survivor’s guilt.

RUSHES PAST ISSUES

But in the end, the novel rushes past these thorny issues onto a conclusion that’s as unsatisfying as it is explosive. It almost feels as though the author thinks glancing at these problems is enough or that she doesn’t trust her audience enough to really engage them.

What we’re left with is a page-turner filled with sometimes sharp, sometimes cringe-y dialogue — Reid’s depiction of an Alabama accent is so over-the-top it feels actionable: “Hah there … Ah’m Casey. Ah’m a senior at the University of Arkansas … and Ah’ll be 21 this Saturday.”

It’s not the book “Such a Fun Age” is; it certainly doesn’t deserve comparisons to other campus-set novels like Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” or Caroline O’Donoghue’s “The Rachel Incident.” (I’ve seen those comparisons made.)

There’s nothing wrong with that. Reid is a writer of no small potential, but “Come & Get It” is more like a detailed treatment for a Netflix limited series (one I’d like to watch) than a great novel. It’s not a diss to say that. Reid, to her credit, obviously has high aspirations. She’s on the record as saying there’s no reason that literary fiction can’t be fun. I agree, and would argue that a lot of it is great fun.

My theory is that “Come & Get It” isn’t really a follow-up to “Such a Fun Age,” but that some of it was written concurrently, or even before that book.

And Reid’s third novel, whenever it comes out, will be the one to watch.