{ "item_title" : "Great Black Hope", "item_author" : [" Rob Franklin "], "item_description" : "NATIONAL BESTSELLER Cool and concise; a talent to watch. --Jay McInerney author of Bright Lights, Big City You're going to get papercuts, you're going to turn the pages so fast. --Brad Thor, Today A gripping debut from an electrifying new voice about an upwardly mobile and downwardly spiraling Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamourous parties and sudden consequences, a friend's mysterious death and his own arrest. An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not. It's just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he's still reeling from the tabloid spectacle--as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it's not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life--drawn back into the city's underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future. Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/66/807/743/1668077434_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "28.99", "online_price" : "28.99", "our_price" : "28.99", "club_price" : "28.99", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "28.99" } }

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In Rob Franklin’s Great Black Hope we first meet the protagonist, a young, queer, Black man, as he’s being busted for partaking in a bit of nose candy. His name is David Alexander Smith Jr., but everyone calls him Smith, even his parents. Those parents are affluent and well-connected, and because of this, Smith is treated differently than many young Black men in similar situations: He avoids jail. He just has to go to therapy and stay clean, says the pricey lawyer his dad finds for him. Smith will appear in court at a later date and hope the judge goes easy on him and expunges his record. While he waits for all this to happen, we watch Smith keep some interesting company. The friends he hangs with are weird and fascinating. They’re club kids, models, artists and trust fund babies who whirl from one never-ending party to another. Smith himself is weird and fascinating, too, and a thrum of sadness and even anomie runs through the book. He seems disconnected from everything around him, including his family and friends—if these people can even be considered friends. Even his reaction to the death of his roommate, the vibrant daughter of a Diana Ross-level superstar, is strangely bland. In one sad scene, Smith wanders into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and though he’s not rejected, neither is he embraced. The only emotion he seems to feel deeply is a rage that comes upon him out of the blue but that he rarely shows. Otherwise he is, as Franklin writes, “a fetal, half-drawn thing.” So, what does Franklin mean by great Black hope? Is it Smith, a man who feels he has to almost erase himself to make it in a white-dominated culture, or is it his parents or brilliant sister who have flourished in spite of it? Great Black Hope is an impressively written, a little uncomfortable and thought-provoking debut novel with much to say about its protagonist’s aspirations, disappointments and confusion. Franklin is a writer to keep an eye on.

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