The Topeka School by Ben Lerner

In the last year I have read a number of works of fiction that function more as a memoir than as a story, and this is one such book. It is set in the late 1990s in Topeka, Kansas, where Lerner himself grew up. It is told in three intertwined narratives, alternating between the perspectives of Adam and his parents, Jonathan and Jane. When crossed, Adam uses his debating skills to launch on his parents “an overwhelming barrage of ridiculous but somehow irrefutable arguments” that will be recognizable to any parent of teenaged children to some degree or another. Jonathan and Jane are New York psychiatrists who moved to Topeka to work at a psychiatric institution that is a liberal enclave in the otherwise conservative town. Jane has found national fame and local notoriety after writing a book about relationships and toxic masculinit, which makes her wildly unpopular. as you can imagine. White men in particular hate it when what they see as their birthrite is assailed. The parents are both revealed as well intentioned but also desperately unhappy. One of the many powerful questions the book asks is how, when we know ourselves so well, do we still manage to be so monstrous to one another?