GREAT EXPECTATIONS

A young man reckons with race, family, and disillusionment on a presidential campaign.

David, the narrator of Cunningham’s elegant and contemplative debut, is a 20-something Black man who in 2007 has stumbled into a minor role on the fundraising team for a U.S. senator and upstart presidential candidate. (He’s unnamed, but it’s plainly Barack Obama.) David needs something to believe in: A young father, he’s flunked out of college and is making ends meet by tutoring. Even so, the campaign’s high-flown hope-and-change rhetoric is a world removed from his job greeting wealthy donors, accepting checks, and helping to arrange more meet-and-greets. So he contemplates how he fits in as he scrutinizes the backgrounds of the high-dollar donors and celebrity boosters, particularly the Black ones. (Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and André Leon Talley have brief cameos.) The campaign’s conclusion is no surprise, of course, but the book is alive in its intellectual detours, with Cunningham considering religion, race, sex, film, politics, fatherhood, and more. (David’s memories are particularly affecting when it comes to music, especially his experience singing in church.) The tone of these asides is essayistic—Cunningham is a cultural critic at the New Yorker—yet none of them feel stapled-on. Rather, the campaign offers a sensible springboard for contemplation of pretty much everything. As David’s mentor, Beverly, tells him, “The real thing is: How about you get some power and then use it?” She’s talking about Black leadership, but her comment also relates to David’s sense of self. Cunningham’s choice of title is nervy, but though the story only vaguely echoes Dickens (Beverly is Havisham-adjacent), it perfectly encapsulates the kinds of anxiety that follow a smart young man still coming into being. Why let a perfectly good title go to waste?

A top-shelf intellectual bildungsroman.