If Kiley Reid’s debut – 2019’s Booker-longlisted, Reese Witherspoon-approved Such a Fun Age – spins on the crooked axis of a Philadelphia nanny’s relationship with her Lean In-loving, Lululemon-clad employer, the author’s second novel, Come and Get It, revolves around one professor, two students, and their sometimes-entertaining, sometimes-excruciating interactions over the course of the 2017/2018 academic year at the University of Arkansas.
In order: there’s visiting lecturer Agatha, a nonfiction writer in her late thirties whose Anne Helen Petersen-esque works of cultural criticism are successful enough that she can afford a “Wüsthof seven-piece set” of knives; Missourian Millie, a fifth-year senior and Resident Assistant (RA) at the 120-person Belgrade Dormitory, whose obsession with HGTV sees her squirrelling away $20 bills in the hopes of one day buying a Fixer Upper-esque property; and Kennedy, an Iowa-born twirler who lives in one of Belgrade’s in-no-way-glamorous “suites”, where she attempts to plug the void of loneliness with a deluge of strip-mall purchases (“a porcelain unicorn for hanging jewellery”, placards saying “Rise and Grind”, “an unopened box holding a ‘mini chandelier’”).