Kiley Reid, author of 2019 sensation ‘Such a Fun Age’, is back with her new novel ‘Come and Get It’. Thrive Detroit reviews.
Kiley Reid, author of 2019 sensation Such a Fun Age, is back with her new novel, Come and Get It, recently selected for Good Morning America and Michigan Public (formerly Michigan Radio) book clubs.
Reid is already known as a master of messy, real stories that hint — and sometimes shout — about money, class and race, and how they intersect with our social interactions. This time, the setting is the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where Reid formerly lived and worked and which she calls one of her favorite American cities.
Millie Cousins, 24, who is Black, has returned to her studies after taking a break to be with her sick mother, and to her resident assistant job in what is known as the least-desirable dormitory. She takes her job very seriously, at least at first. But then things start to unravel.
Millie has been preparing for her future, meticulously planning and saving to buy her own house while still an undergraduate. Despite the dorm’s lack of popularity, there are plenty of young female residents with access to money, including the only other Black woman on the floor (who is not interested in a friendship with Millie, dispelling any myth that they must “stick together”).
One of the disrupters of Millie’s focused life is Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer who is on a one-year contract after escaping her marriage of convenience with an inconsistent dancer and is focusing on teaching and writing. She meets Millie when a few of the students in Millie’s dorm respond to her call for student interviewees for her new project about weddings and money. But during the interviews, Agatha gathers more than she bargained for and quickly abandons the notion of writing about weddings, focusing instead on an unexpected study of characters. She also abandons the appropriate nature of her relationship with Millie.
As research for the novel, Reid interviewed 30 college students — some of whom were privileged southern college girls, and some of whom were not — and used a few direct quotes from them. One standout is a young woman who received a legally dubious “practice paycheck” from her dad’s business for years; another a collegiate baton-twirler who was the golden girl at another university until one bad decision turned her into a pariah and she transfered to Arkansas. Reid’s personal experience of being a resident assistant herself in college also offers up some authenticity.
The novel is full of impulsive bad decisions that derail characters’ paths. Some readers may judge these characters harshly, but Reid weaves them together with a sophistication that helps to illustrate that we are all “this close” to doing the same in a complicated situation. The heroes aren’t who they seem, either. One small action and outcome can change who they — or we —thought they were.
Money also plays a central role, and supermarket chain Target even shows up as a minor character, with Reid interjecting some social commentary on our need for stuff and how collecting can be both a comfort and a problem.
Reid wanted to title her novel Suey, also spelled “sooie,” a call used by farmers to summon hogs and fans of the school’s athletics teams, the Arkansas Razorbacks, also known as the Hogs — and there is a pig on the cover, but her publishers pushed for Come and Get It. One can’t help but imagine the humans in that call, responding to the lure of money.
Courtesy of Thrive Detroit / INSP.ngo