RaveBrooklyn RailThe dust jacket says the novel is about toxic masculinity, but this seems too simple and reductive, too buzzwordy a way to describe such a complicated work. Yes, manhood and manliness and masculinity and all the maladies innate to such constructed gender norms are integral to the story, but The Topeka School is, in a deeper sense, also about language, about the menace and mendacity of which language is capable. It’s about the precariousness of communication. Lerner extrapolates the innate violence of language, its dangers, the brutality lurking within the beauty of words, but also how these same words can express love, assuage anxiety, provide comfort in a moment of need. (Lerner writes with great compassion. This is a political novel, but not a cynical novel.) ... The debate sections...are among the most fluid and enthralling prose writing Lerner has ever done. While not as poetic or rarefied as in 10:04...the writing here is just as emotional and alive, the prejudices of the present informing the depiction of the past ... The novel is a portrait of a family, of a place, of a time that, fragile and fleeting, will lead to the imbroglio in which we presently find ourselves. Without pontificating or succumbing to the allure of performative wokeness, Lerner writes earnest, empathetic political prose. He posits no answers—he can’t even find ways to articulate his questions, sometimes. But not knowing is part of life, and part of The Topeka School.
