Ben Lerner’s The Topeka School is an ambitious rendering of youth and change as the world around us revolutionizes, for better or worse. Told through the individuals making up a family unit we get a story that is both several lifetimes and, somehow, a brief incident in time.
When we begin, it is quickly made clear to us that Lerner is a talented and concise writer. We find ourselves inside a police station and from the point of view of Darren, a character that the book explores peripherally and never truly zeros in on. It instantly feels as though this will be a story unraveled around the coming to of the event leading Darren here to the station. This turns out to be both true and overwhelmingly off the mark at the same time.
After leaving Darren in the station, we turn to our main family, Adam, Jonathan and Jane. We are introduced to them with Adam’s voice and then explore the family dynamic as we switch between voices throughout the book. It is, however, Darren’s story, though comparatively small and lineally compact, that adds shape and complexity to the story of the family. He seems to be used as almost a seeing glass through which to view the rest of the world.
Lerner delves into the story using the voices of intellectuals to seemingly navigate an environment of intellectual decay, or at least stubborn push-back to the development of a ‘reasonable’ society. There are strong undertones of feminism, and more-so, the task of handling being a feminist and loving a feminist in the 1990s, a time that very much reeked of ‘what more could they want’. We are slowly introduced to the idea of Jane, wife of Jonathan and Mother of Adam, being a “famous” or “professional” feminist, and what it is like not just for her as a woman and a mother, but what it is like for the men in her life.
Both Jane and Jonathan are professional psychologists in this story and Adam is an exceptionally skilled debater. These identifiers are leaned on heavily in the individual voices of the characters, in their own stories and in the way they view and interact with each other, which is an interesting and raw take on how we communicate with, and interpret, those around us. When Adam is telling the story, the metaphor of debate is entwined into the story, both through structure and having the character himself draw back on these ideas. This amplifies the personal shape of the story; we are presented with a character trying to communicate with us in terms they understand, bridging the divide between character and reader, despite these chapters being written in third person.
The same format is given to Jane and Jonathan respectively. One relying on the language of psychology and the other, the story of “A Man by the Name of Ziegler”. This gives texture to the story in such a way that we feel we are seeing into three different parts of three different lives. It isn’t until well into the novel that it becomes clear that all three characters are telling the same story; describing what is actually a very short span of time. The richness of each character’s inner lives, however, are what gives the story shape and complexity. What feels like a personal insight into one character’s history, thoughts, and wants, provides the reader with small moments so layered, they are both overwhelmingly inclusive and separate from reality at the same time. It explores an intimacy of understanding we can never have in our own realities.
This unreachable experience is mended by the way the book is tied, and the way speech is used between the characters. Jane’s parts specifically, weave seamlessly in and out of first and second person, giving the impression that what we are reading is in fact a personal account of the past, directed by letter, to her son Adam, arguably the overall protagonist of the story. Whilst the same isn’t specifically felt for Jonathan, his parts of the story are all written in first person, the only character to do so, reinforcing this feeling. Although the direct addressing of another character isn’t evident for Jonathan, it seems like more of a comment on the individual inner lives of Jane and Jonathan as people and as parents.
What could have easily been another dreary exploration of a family navigating the modern world has been skilfully mastered by Lerner to create a thoughtful, honest and sometimes overwhelming comment on life and the relentless ordeal of growing up. Lerner seems to have tapped into a revolutionary style of story-telling that manages to encapsulate the drearier parts of family life as well as the immensity of modern-world America. Whilst not a particularly light, fun-filled read, The Topeka School is a nuanced and thought-provoking novel filled to the brim with relatable day-to-day experiences cracked open and laid out to reflect the complexity of the lives we lead.
Abigail Honey, On The Page
