Modern storytelling has a tendency to value over-the-top narratives (and sacrifice quality writing in the process) in trying to attract audiences. Maybe this is why stories with such simple, well written plots feel refreshing.
Come & Get It, the 2024 novel from Kiley Reid, acclaimed author of 2019’s Such A Fun Age, tells the story of a group of women on a college campus, specifically in one of the dorms and its brilliance lies in its simplicity and well crafted storytelling.
Millie is a senior RA, returning from a gap year spent home with her parents. The dorm, known for being the worst of the University’s housing options, is also home to Tyler and Kennedy, the two main students who will shape the novel’s plot.
Tyler is the more modern iteration of the quintessential “mean girl”, while Kennedy is an awkward transfer student who struggles to fit in, but neither feel reduced as the tropes they fit into.
The last piece of the puzzle: Agatha, a visiting professor and author –who’s trying to escape her own romantic woes– kicks off the novel when she goes to interview three students at the dorm (including Tyler and her friend Casey) for her new book.
Although they start on the topic of weddings, Agatha soon follows a new path of questioning when the girls start talking about how they spend/earn their money. Afterwards, Millie (who is on duty for the night) admits to overhearing the whole process and some of the strange and bordering on prejudiced comments made by the three students. Agatha and Millie connect briefly, laughing at the girls’ privileged and largely misinformed views.
Everyone in Come & Get It has their own views on money, and their experience with it shapes their relationships whether they realize it or not (usually the latter). Agatha is getting out of a long term relationship that fell apart in part due to her viewing her partner’s lack of financial responsibility as immaturity. Millie is trying desperately to save every penny so that she can buy a house when she graduates. Kennedy deals with her social anxiety by browsing the aisles of Target and purchasing unneeded decor for her dorm room (a habit noticed by Millie and Kennedy’s roommates).
It’s hard to give a plot synopsis without spoiling the developments of the character’s relationships, but what Reid does so interestingly is how she intertwines her characters’ lives and how their backstories dictate their actions and emotions without feeling like half-baked excuses for their poor behavior.
Reid’s writing is a masterclass in showing, not telling. Her characters feel natural and it never feels that she is trying to force a lesson down your throat.
That being said, she still manages to make informed points within her novels. During an interview with The Guardian, Reid cites books such as “…Hustle: Against the Neoliberal Turn in Black Politics [by Lester Spence]; Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton’s Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, and FS Michaels’ Monoculture” as her research for writing.
Reid’s writing is a refreshing style focused on the complexities of human relationships, with their environments, with money, and, most importantly, with each other.
Both Come & Get It and Such A Fun Age are available at the New Hartford Public Library as physical copies and as a digital audiobook through Libby.
