Kiley Reid explores what spending habits and desires say about who we truly are

Kiley Reid came onto the literary stage for many readers in 2019 when her debut novel “Such a Fun Age” was published. It went on to become a New York Times bestseller, was chosen for Reese’s Book Club and longlisted for the Booker Prize.

“Come and Get It,” her second novel, was released this week with a story set in Fayetteville at the University of Arkansas campus in fictional Belgrade dormitory. Reid will discuss her new book at the Fayetteville Public Library on Wednesday.

The storyline of “Come and Get It” follows a few characters closely including Millie Cousins, a Black student resident assistant, as she attempts to simultaneously save money for her first house and complete her senior undergraduate year. Agatha Paul is a visiting professor/author whose offer to pay the RA for contributions to her research seems like easy money. The intrigue of the story revolves around their interactions with each other and other students, some of whom live on Millie’s floor.

Attitudes around money and materialism are central to the storyline.

Reid lived in Fayetteville for one year before entering her master of fine arts program. She thought a place that was geographically but not culturally southern could be an interesting setting for a novel based in the South, according to a press release.

While crafting the novel, Reid imagined it would have the title “Sooie” because of the call of the Razorbacks, but the meaning didn’t translate easily to those who hadn’t lived in Northwest Arkansas. When her agent asked what “sooie” meant and whether it could be boiled down to “come and get it,” Reid knew they had a title.

“This is a novel about three people coming to Fayetteville to get something,” Reid said, according to a press release. “But it’s also an exploration of what a capitalist society promises and how that promise flounders.”

Locals will recognize many of the settings the characters find themselves in, including Dickson Street, Puritan Coffee, Ozark Natural Foods, Nightbird Books, Maxine’s Taproom, Wilson Park, Lake Fayetteville and more.

Reid spoke with us by Zoom on January 24.

When did you get the idea for “Come and Get It”?

The wonderful and terrible thing about publishing is that it takes a very long time, so I had been working on “Come and Get It” for about 10 months before “Such a Fun Age” came out. I was finishing my second year of my MFA and thought I wanted to write about young people and money.

I had a bevy of really charming, bright and generous young people around me while I was teaching undergraduate courses, so I ended up interviewing at the time maybe seven or eight students, asking them questions about their own money, their language around money, how much money they have, their jobs and that was the start of “Come and Get It.”

What were the initial things that pulled you into that subject?

I read a book called “Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality” written by two sociologists Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton. It’s a five year interview study where they tracked different students from freshman year to beyond graduation. They mark out the pathways that each of those young women has financially, career wise, socially, the opportunities that they have to travel.

I was really inspired by the novel. There was a really intimate quality to the way the young woman spoke about themselves. There was one line where a young women was saying that all of the girls she wants to be friends with have puffy coats and she says, “I want a puffy coat” and there’s just something so delicate and pure about that desire.

But I also really loved the premise — these very academic women interviewing young women figuring out how to live for the first time. That was a huge catalyst for this novel and of course it went in a bunch of different directions.

A tendency of mine is to look at a circumstance that exists in the real world and say, ‘What would this look like if something went terribly wrong?’

You spoke to students yourself and they told you all sorts of things, like receiving “practice paychecks” from their father’s office despite not working there. What goes through your mind when you hear something that sounds straight out of fiction?

You have to be careful with fiction, because some things are so outlandish that it almost appears made up, but I truly believe the funniest, truest, most peculiar things within fiction can be found in real life as well, so it’s making those moments translate on the page.

Of course in that moment as a researcher, I’m mostly grateful for her honesty and her generously sharing her life with me. I did not want to do a satire for this novel, I wanted just to depict real people. I love the South, I love Fayetteville, I love teaching, I wanted to highlight the wonderful parts of those aspects as well, but it’s also a goal of mine to have hyper realistic situations, so some characters are really smart on

one page and the next page they’re making a really big mistake.

Looking at the different circumstances of young women in college, the range of support and income is staggering. And hustle culture is a huge part of being in college socially and academically. I think a lot of my interviews highlighted that we all are not starting from the same place and we all do not have the same opportunities, even though we’re competing at the same level.

So, about the characters…

I was looking for the three young women to represent all different corners of students that you see. Tyler is the one student who is truly working to middle class, and yet she has a lot of cultural cache and power. Peyton is very wealthy and doesn’t want anything to do with anyone, except for her one girlfriend. Jenna is very wealthy and is on diversity scholarship and Casey is academically ambitious because of her grades. They’re all from pretty different backgrounds.

Tell me about your choice to have Millie as the main character, did you feel like more people would relate to her? I wanted a character who was on paper doing everything right. Someone who is responsible and patient and likable and also finds a lot of pleasure in following the rules and sticking to protocol.

It’s important to remember Millie is someone who wants to do everything right. Even if she got a perfect trajectory she’s never going to have the amenities and benefits a lot of her classmates have.

She also has to be mentally ‘on’ in a way that other students do not. As an RA someone can come and knock on your door at absolutely anytime I say ‘I need help,’ or ‘my roommate and I had a fight’ and it’s her role to be there for them for only $250 a month, plus room and board.

I think Millie’s position and her personality highlight the fact that while she’s doing work, other students get to go out or study or figure out what they’re going to wear or watch TV. Millie truly believes that hard work will take her very far. She would never stop working hard because she knows that’s going to benefit her, but I think Millie comes to understand that people obtain advances in life from many different things — for better or worse — by the end.

I love her savings boot, stashing her cash in one shoe in her closet.

I did have a savings shoe as well, mine was a tap shoe.

When you were writing ‘Come and Get It’ and friends and family would ask you ‘What are you writing about?’ how did you describe it back then?

I would mention that this was a story based in a dorm. It’s about what people do when they’re alone, it’s about how young people navigate money. It’s very much a novel about consumption and buying things; buying relationships and buying face masks when you’re depressed and saving up for houses. It’s a novel about coming to head with who they are based on their consumption choices.

Something that I’m sure you’ll be asked a lot is ‘Why Arkansas/ Fayetteville/ UofA?’ You took the experiences of multiple places and colleges and formed it together, but ultimately you have to choose one place to set it at. Why did you decide to put it in a real place rather than a completely made up campus?

In the beginning of crafting this novel, I was not fully committed to setting it at the University of Arkansas. I thought that potentially a fictional campus would give me more freedom and I would not have to answer to anyone’s personal experience, especially because I had not gone to the University of Arkansas.

But the more that I researched, the truth is so much better than anything I could create in my head. I felt that I had the resources and the lived experience of the year I spent in Fayetteville to accurately depict the town and I think that’s the most important part.

This is not how Arkansas is for all students, just what Arkansas meant to these three people who are coming there for the first time. I like writing about characters coming to a place for the first time and what that place means to them. So I felt like I was equipped to write about Arkansas in this way. I also really love Fayetteville, and so I wanted to celebrate the parts that meant something to me, from how beautiful it is, to how easy it is to live there.

This is also, a novel that doesn’t fit perfectly in the campus novel scope. I would say it’s more of a dorm novel and based in living quarters than a campus novel focused on classrooms, parties and grades.

(Courtesy of David Goddard) Kiley Reid, New York Times Bestselling author of “Such a Fun Age,” is back with a new novel, “Come and Get It,” which is set in Fayetteville. Among its main characters is Agatha Paul, an author and assistant professor who researches students’ money habits, much like Reid did for this novel, but that’s where their similarities end, Reid said. Bits and pieces of her experience turn up in many characters. She was a transfer student like Kennedy and a resident assistant for a year like Millie. “I believe my experiences will dip in and out and pique my curiosity to make something a bit truer of an experience for one of my characters,” she said.

(Courtesy of Putnam) During her appearance at the Fayetteville Public Library on Wednesday, Kiley Reid will talk about her experiences in Northwest Arkansas, speak about writing and publishing and hopes people will be willing to discuss money, the central topic to her new book “Come and Get It.”