Fulfillment
A Novel
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- $229.00
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
From the acclaimed author of Groundskeeping comes a searing family drama set in Kentucky where the homecoming of two half-brothers—successful Joel with his restless wife Alice, and struggling Emmett—ignites a clash of ambitions and desires, exposing raw truths about class, privilege, and happiness in the American South.
Fulfillment tells the story of two half brothers—Joel, a successful academic and author, whose marriage is in deep trouble, and his younger sibling, Emmett, paralyzed by indecision and working in a shipping warehouse—who find themselves at their family home in Kentucky and upend each other’s lives in devastating ways.
Between them is Alice, Joel's wife, a wry, passionate young woman whose dream of a small farm feels unattainable, and whose longing for a more authentic life collides with Emmett's hunger for connection and desire to escape a sense of burgeoning failure. As the chemistry between them escalates, the family is plunged into a violent crucible, each character brought to the precipice of immutable catastrophe.
Incisive, poignant, gorgeously crafted, Lee Cole's haunting novel about class, privilege, brotherhood, and the American South asks whether people can change, and at what cost, and what it takes to build a life of fulfillment and meaning.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cole (Groundskeeping) spins an evocative tale of ambition, lust, and sibling rivalry in western Kentucky. After toiling as a line cook in New Orleans, 28-year-old Emmett comes home to Paducah, where he takes a job at a massive fulfillment warehouse for an Amazon-like retailer and rents a nearby company condo. Meanwhile, his successful older half brother, Joel, and his wife, Alice, move in with Joel and Emmett's mother. Joel has published a well-received essay collection that mines his experience growing up in the South, and has just accepted a visiting lecture position at a local university. Emmett hopes to flex his own creativity as a screenwriter, despite having no connections or experience. After Alice admits to Emmett that her marriage is crumbling, the two begin an affair, and the plot ramps up further when Emmett's coworker convinces him to steal pharmaceuticals for the illegal drug market. Meanwhile, Joel plugs away at his second book and starts popping antidepressants. Cole has fun with Emmett's search for his screenplay's "hero's journey," and he writes gorgeously descriptive sentences ("the earth was darker than the sky, the pink-rimmed horizon a seam between two worlds"), but the mix of hijinks and high stakes feels tonally imbalanced. Nevertheless, this captures a colorful snapshot of contemporary Southern life.
