The book isn’t necessarily interested in solving its central mystery; what it wants to do instead is emphatically contextualize it. Frumkin doesn’t simply explain a crime; she examines every life the crime touched. Which means a lot of digression. And this might be tiresome if the digressions weren’t so good, so fully realized and meticulously, skillfully rendered. A weird feature of this book’s structure is that sometimes the new protagonist is someone you’ve never heard of, which creates a moment of disorientation that Frumkin bravely, confidently allows to remain; she trusts her readers ... Rebekah Frumkin can write ... readers hoping for a quick-plotted crime drama might feel a little angry as each chapter backtracks to chronicle some new origin story, but they’ll be missing the real brilliance of this book: In its rejection of any fixed perspective, The Comedown is able to examine the reflexive and sometimes sloppy ways people construct an identity, how that identity changes over time and how that identity is often dramatically different from the way people are perceived from the outside ... it’s a book about crests and troughs, highs and comedowns, joys and brutalities—about how easily our lives are wrecked, but also how powerfully we’re able to survive and rebuild.

With a tapestry which brings to mind a nineteenth-century naturalist novel, The Comedown supplies a dozen hypotheses on how children become their eventual adult selves, isolating the inputs which produce divergence among even siblings and spouses ... While a few of The Comedown’s characters exhibit a saccharine quaintness ostensibly ill-suited for their desperation, the sprightly pacing means their deep backgrounds are executed in brief snapshots, and Frumkin manages to sympathize with them without needing to occupy them herself ... Frumkin’s race writing in The Comedown is perceptive and modulated. Both the Jewish and black families are recognizable yet atypical, and the intersection of white guilt with sexual fulfillment makes for some of the book’s most compelling, if delicate, passages ... The Comedown’s non-chronological narrative can make for rough going early on, but as Frumkin leaves no heartstring untugged, it makes the exposition suspenseful in itself. If it’s a trick, it’s a brilliant and thrilling one, with each pivot and retread diligently plotted ... The Comedown is a romp which never loses track of its compassion, messy in a charismatic, lifelike way, a giant, leaping wash of twentieth and twenty-first century Americana which never lapses into cliche. Frumkin’s characters linger long after the final page, such that finishing the book is a comedown of its own.

Frumkin’s technique of replaying scenes from multiple perspectives effectively gives readers a 360-degree view of how something happened. Most importantly, however, it is useful for exploring the totality of how her characters’ actions affect those around them, and how each character lives with it. The scope of The Comedown is such that everyone is in close proximity to a tragedy at all times. Frumkin’s juxtaposition makes it clear that what these characters do to one another in the book is both awful and perfectly human. The contrast born out of The Comedown’s structure also makes room for Frumkin to explore her characters’ wide-ranging sociopolitical circumstances. The differences are generational, racial, cultural, and economic, and she writes clearly on how their existence and collisions shape the lives of her characters ... At its core, the book is about relationships and the joy and pain they bring. In that realm, and others, it’s a resounding success.

Each chapter is dedicated to a single character who, in most cases, will not be the primary focus again. This structural gambit unfortunately results in a compartmentalized narrative. All 13 protagonists get their own chapter, with only one or two repeats. And because the chapters are structured like character sketches, every 15 or 20 pages the reader must reset and make mental space for a new set of personality quirks and childhood memories. As a result, much of the novel is given over to flashbacks and exposition. Each chapter demands the escape velocity of a short story ... All of her characters are rendered with depth, portrayed with amusement and affection. Frumkin’s witty, third-person voice is as comfortable with the drug-dealing Reggie Marshall as it is his Melville scholar wife, Tasha ... It is a fundamentally comic novel (and a very funny one at that).

Each point of view (and there are many) feels distinct; often, the same events are shown through the eyes of different characters, adding dimension. Although some readers might find it disorienting to be launched into another point of view just when they’ve settled into the current one, the novel’s nonlinear, fragmented structure reflects its themes of disconnection and the uneasy mental states of most of the characters. Messy, meandering and occasionally illuminating, The Comedown is a family saga that recalls real life.

Frumkin’s powerfully drawn moments present themes of race, religion, and education; addiction and mental illness; sex, love, and inheritance. And if her novel’s sprawl comes at the cost of its focus, Frumkin displays a real knack for creating lifelike, original characters and letting them do the talking. Readers who enjoy getting quite literally lost in interconnected stories and drilled-down character studies will happily buckle up for the ride.

The novel is less a mystery than a set of character studies that make up a cross-section of contemporary America ... A stronger novel would more efficiently connect its many threads (or dispense with a few), but from page to page, character to character, this is a powerful debut. Frumkin has talent to burn, and this very good novel suggests the potential for a truly great one.

...a messily realistic narrative with many loose ends and too much detail about minor players, yet with a powerful sense of personal blind spots and self-delusions. Fans of puzzling, epic family sagas will enjoy the layered narrative, but the roundabout path may put off some readers.