FULFILLMENT

Two half brothers return to Kentucky to confront their roots—and themselves.

Emmett, a main character in Cole’s engaging sophomore effort, works as an “unloader,” transferring packages from air cargo containers to conveyor belts at a massive fulfillment and distribution center. The facility is in a “nowheresville” area of Kentucky, Emmett’s home state, to which he has returned after working low-pay, low-status jobs elsewhere in the country, including, most recently, New Orleans. Emmett harbors dreams of becoming a screenwriter, though he has yet to complete a screenplay. His return home coincides with that of his more accomplished elder half brother, Joel, a cultural studies lecturer and writer who has taken a temporary teaching position at a small college nearby. Joel, whom Emmett believes to be their mother’s favorite, has moved from New York into the family home in Paducah with his wife, Alice, as their marriage has begun to disintegrate. Despite initial appearances, fulfillment, it seems, may be as elusive to Joel and Alice as it is Emmett. As he did with his debut, Groundskeeping (2022), Cole perfectly captures a particular kind of charming yet frustrating character: a slow-to-launch, aspiring Southern writer who makes ill-considered decisions that throw his life into disarray. Clearly, this is Cole’s wheelhouse. He himself was born and raised in rural Kentucky. Here the author takes his main characters in marginally different directions, exploring sibling rivalry and family loyalty, as well as how we are irrevocably connected to and formed by the people and places from whom and which we come. Readers who enjoyed Cole’s keenly observed and insightful first novel and were left wanting more of the same—or very similar—will find it in this follow-up effort. Those hoping for something new from this talented author, however, may find fulfillment elusive.

If you loved Cole’s first Kentucky-set novel about an endearing underachiever, you will enjoy his second.