PositiveThe Rumpus... a novel so dialed into its own rhetorical structure and method of execution, so confident in its delivery, that anyone who is writing fiction today would do well to study its pacing, prose, and the way Kiesling gives no quarter to Daphne Nilsen’s sense of psychic safety—the sign of a writer willing to go well beyond the threshold needed to create moving and vulnerable fiction ... Kiesling has said in interviews that she wanted to write a novel about bureaucracy. This book takes that on in two ways: with Engin, sitting and waiting for the proper paperwork/interview/next step from the US government, and in the small descriptions of Daphne’s work life. The former is daunting for its rubber-stamp slowness and Stephen Millerian-Trumpian racism, while the latter is aggravating for its absolute low-stakes drama ... Anyone who has ever put a one-year-old down for a nap or nighttime will identify with how funny the book is, and also how parents overestimate their goodwill ... So much of the book is taken up with Daphne’s bearing water for those alive and dead that, in the end, when she finally divests herself of the unnecessary load, we can only hope that the next stage of her journey is more comfortable and compassionate than what we’ve experienced with her.
