John Donne wrote that “no man is an island,” Sartre that “hell is other people”—two ways of describing our intrinsic entanglement with each other, us humans. Leslie Jamison’s Splinters (Little, Brown) and Sloane Crosley’s Grief Is for People (MCD/FSG) tender another two takes. In Splinters, Jamison braids the at times volcanic dissolution of her marriage, her overwhelming love for her infant daughter (even as she yearns to return to unfettered art making), and the memory of her parents’ own split—turning a keen eye on how both she and her ex-husband foundered, offering grace for each party. In the droll and poignant Grief, Crosley (a VF contributor) confronts two calamities that occur a month apart: A thief steals her jewelry and her closest friend dies. What might seem like a conflation of disproportionate events becomes a bridge toward closure—or rather, the understanding that closure is just a story we tell ourselves. Though it’s loss that these books grapple with, the pages brim with life.
Inspirations
In Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It (Putnam), a professor obsesses over the class dynamics of an undergrad dorm suite and eavesdropping ensues. Here, Reid, also author of Such a Fun Age, shares her inspirations.
RUNAWAY by Larry Keigwin, 2008
After seeing this dance piece, which Reid calls a “bizarre combination of animal-like behavior and rigid mannequins” in 2010, “it stuck with me so much” that she wrote a modern dancer character into Come and Get It.
KNOCKING THE HUSTLE by Lester Spence, 2015
This “transformative,” “beautifully written” book—“specifically in its position against the political narrative of inevitability”— informed Reid’s shaping of one character “for whom hustle is a cornerstone of her personality.”
FUNNY GAMES by Michael Haneke, 1997
Reid describes the film’s “egg scene” as “a perfect example of characters breaking the rules of decorum, resulting in a fantastic low-level dread.”
