“Topeka School” by Ben Lerner, Farrar Straus Giroux, 287 pp. $27.
Ben Lerner grew up in Topeka, Kansas, the son of two Jewish psychologists at the Menninger Clinic. In his adulthood, he has become an award-winning novelist and poet, and now teaches in Brooklyn, New York.
This novel is somewhat autobiographical. The main character, Adam Gordon, has parents who are both psychoanalysts at an institution in Topeka referred to as “The Foundation.” His mother Jane Gordon has recently become famous for a book she wrote. This book puts her fellow psychoanalysts in the shadow of her fame. And if you haven’t figured it out, Adam’s mother is based on Ben Lerner’s mother Harriet Lerner whose first book, “The Dance of Anger,” became a great success.
Adam works to be part of the in-crowd at his high school. He’s not an athlete, but he is a successful debater, and he has a beautiful girlfriend. On the opposite side is a boy named Darren who is very troubled and unable to fit in with the gang, and becomes the punching bag for the in-crowd.
Sometimes the novel jumps to Adam’s parents and how they are thinking and what they are doing. The book portrays a bumpy ride of people trying to make sense of their lives, and because Ben Lerner is a poet, the novel is also very poetically written. It is a fascinating exploration of coming of age in Kansas, dealing with a parent’s fame and facing life’s ups and downs
Andrea Kempf is a retired librarian and an award winning book reviewer.
