January 29, 2024
Provided image/Penguin Random House; David Goddard
Kiley Reid's new novel, 'Come and Get It,' is out Tuesday, Jan. 30. Her 2019 book 'Such a Fun Age' was set in Philadelphia and a Reese's Book Club pick.
In the new book "Come and Get It," the students living in a Southern college dorm know how to drop a quietly vicious comment. During one memorable gossip session, three resident advisors tear a junior to shreds over her dog named Dixie — which, they joke, might as well be called Antebellum.
"I love petty," Kiley Reid, the author of "Come and Get It," said with a laugh. "I also feel that we all love petty, get petty, and I'm very interested in things, just like money, that we don't want to admit that we're interested in, but we can't help ourselves."
Money and pettiness both figure heavily into Reid's second novel, which hits bookshelves Tuesday. It follows her best-selling 2019 debut "Such a Fun Age," a Philadelphia-set satire of white, liberal guilt and privilege that was long-listed for the Booker Prize.
Reid was born in Los Angeles in 1987 and grew up in Tuscon, Arizona, but she lived here in Fishtown when "Such a Fun Age" was released. Then in 2022, she relocated to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she teaches at the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program.
"Come and Get It" also is set on a college campus: the University of Arkansas. (The book's original title, "Sooie," referenced the Razorbacks' famous hog call.) In the novel, visiting professor Agatha Paul gets entangled in the lives of several students after interviewing them about weddings, which reveals how they view wealth. Eager to hear more, Agatha makes an arrangement with the girls' resident advisor, Millie, to eavesdrop on their conversations for book material.
"I started writing 'Come and Get It' in the spring of 2019," Reid explained. "I was teaching undergraduate creative writing classes (at the University of Iowa) and my students were so bright and funny and odd, and sometimes they said things that were absolutely bonkers. And I was really intrigued by their relationship to class and money."
Soon, Reid began interviewing her own students and other young people in Iowa City about money. She found that, despite any professed discomfort, most people were eager to chat. Her resulting novel includes characters of wildly different means, all coexisting in the same space and, in some cases, fudging their true assets to smooth over the wealth gap.
Some of the girls in "Come and Get It," for instance, receive weekly allowances or "practice paychecks" from their parents, which they downplay or obscure in conversation. Others, like Millie, actually need jobs or the scholarships they share with those same students. Fascinated by the divide and tone-deaf dissonance, Agatha soon spins her collection of quotes into a version of Refinery29's "Money Diaries," which, just like the real thing, is an instant internet success.
"I wanted to explore how money works for young people within a dorm for a few reasons," Reid continued. "The first is I'm intrigued by this transition time from living at home with your parents to becoming an adult. It's a moment where students are trying on different personalities and figuring out if they're normal or gross and how to make friends and all of those things. And money becomes a source of support or tension for many young people as they make the transition to being on their own for the first time.
"Colleges are almost like a mall in that way where it's this very shiny, lovely place to live that is masking a lot of consumption habits underneath that are the generator of a lot of strife and struggle."
The unspoken consumption habits extend to friendship, which Reid's characters treat as another form of currency. The campus represents a fresh start for Agatha, a Chicago-based writer in the midst of a divorce, and Kennedy, a shy transfer student fleeing a traumatic incident at her last school. In their search for connection, they stumble and even cross ethical lines. Their stories reveal another unspoken truth about college: Even with so many people in close proximity, it's possible to feel completely alone.
If you want it, Come & Get It. pic.twitter.com/TmTtdsjnRf
— Kiley Reid (@kileyreid) January 12, 2024
Reid is preparing to leave her current college campus for her second book tour, which includes an early stop in Philadelphia at the Parkway Central Library on Wednesday. In addition to possibly revisiting one of her old favorite restaurants — DanDan and Malelani Café both earn mentions — Reid is eager to talk with readers about all the slightly taboo topics that she loves: pettiness, of course, but also crushes, consumption and money.
"It's really interesting how most people I interview want to clarify that they think talking about money is gauche and not polite, but they're very interested," she said. "Money runs so much of our lives and our limitations and who we date and what we buy and who we are. And it's a great entry point to a novel."
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