Gossip blends with weightier themes
Kiley Reid’s sophomore novel, “Come & Get It,” is set in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at the state university where 24-year-old senior Millie Cousins works as a resident assistant.
Born in nearby Missouri, Millie took a gap year after high school to work in Fayetteville and qualify for in-state tuition. She then missed another year while caring for her ailing mother.
Millie’s an excellent RA. Efficient, empathetic and understanding — at least when we first meet her. Enter Agatha Paul, a visiting writing professor, who meets Millie while looking for students to talk to for a book she’s researching about shifting generational attitudes toward weddings. It’s those conversations that really kick off the crux of the novel — the more Agatha talks to the young women, and to Millie, the more fascinated she becomes by their lives. When she starts hanging out more in Millie’s dorm, taking advantage of the thin walls to hear the collegiate dramas playing out in an adjacent suite, the plot kicks into high gear. Millie starts to see Agatha as more than a professor, and Agatha starts to publish snippets about students in Teen Vogue, and things get really messy.
Despite that gossipy setup, Reid creates a story with real weight. Her ear for dialogue — honed, no doubt, by the dozens of actual interviews she conducted with college students for this book — is finely tuned. It feels like you’re reading great gossip, but the characters come across as genuine, with real problems. “Come and Get It” is a fun, propulsive read that puts readers in a world most of them will have long since graduated from, but which provides an ideal window to explore deeper themes — from relationships to class and
Dunia Ahmed disappeared over a year ago.
But before she vanished, weird things were happening, including multiple attempts on her life. So, obviously, two self-proclaimed journalists start a podcast to monetize her tragedy. In her third novel, “Almost Surely Dead,” Amina Akhtar sinks deep into a missing-person mystery with humorous cynicism and an increasingly creepy edge.
Two years ago, Dunia, a pharmacist, was in the middle of her regular commute when a fellow subway rider tried to throw her onto the tracks. Between her stalker exfiancé, David, and the unsettling notes showing up at her work and apartment, it seems like an open and shut case. But flashbacks to when Dunia was 5 years old suggest there may be something more sinister at play.
In these chapters, we see young Dunia’s father telling her ghost stories on the sly, teaching her the pieces of her Desi culture: jinns stealing princesses and grotesque churail. Dunia’s also a perceptive kid; she hears the whispers and knows her aunt was also deemed “pagal” — mentally ill, locked up somewhere in Pakistan.
Dunia has been sleepwalking again since her mother’s death. Disoriented and exhausted, she can’t trust her own eyes and ears. As the story progresses, truths that Dunia couldn’t see at 5 years old come sifting up to the surface, and suddenly the narrative is a lot more complicated. Who should we direct our anger and fear at?
In a stark commentary on victim-blaming, other characters seem to answer: Dunia. Dunia is victimized over and over — by people who seem to see it as their right to treat her poorly or make her relive her near-death experience. Then there’s the podcast — at first serious, but the transcripts soon devolve into “No spoilers!” and tasteless promotional ads. And beneath it all, growing until it can’t be ignored any longer, the supernatural stays at a steady hum.
“Almost Surely Dead” is the perfect psychological thriller for a dark and stormy night or a rainy day alone on the couch. There’s never a good stopping point with Akhtar, a master of pacing and suspense who keeps you guessing until the end.