Last Train to Babylon

November 3, 2014
Fam portrays early twenty-something arrested development in her somewhat bleak debut. Aubrey, living in Manhattan with a boyfriend she's more or less satisfied with, working for a news site she doesn't despise, is probably doing as well as could be expected for someone her age, even if she does drink too much and have passing thoughts of suicide. She thinks she's escaped her Long Island upbringing and the friends and foes of her youth, but when she learns that her high school best friend, Rachel, has committed suicide, the past comes rushing back. Torn over whether to attend the funeral, Aubrey feels compelled to return to her hometown anywayâand smack into the memories of what drove her and Rachel apart. Events surrounding Rachel's funeral and disastrous "after party" alternate with those leading up to Rachel and Aubrey's senior year falling out, illustrating how those events still loom large in Aubrey's consciousness, even years later. Unfortunately, the attempts to build intrigue by delaying the revelation of a particular horrific event in Aubrey's past often just make the narrative feel artificially drawn out and sluggish rather than suspenseful. Aubrey and Rachel's story does, however, illustrate the complicated and often inscrutable nature of high school girls' volatile relationships and their long-lasting scars.

October 15, 2014
In Fam's debut novel, a recent college graduate "content creator" returns home to Long Island for the funeral of her former best friend and is forced to confront her deeply painful past.Aubrey wakes up in a psychiatric care facility, bruised and severely hung over, after taking a drunken walk along an elevated train line after the funeral of her high school best friend, Rachel. Aubrey harbors a seething anger toward Rachel and her guidance-counselor mother, Karen, but the reasons are camouflaged by a 20-something cynicism and the despairing consumption of booze. As the narrative progresses, we move between present-day Aubrey and the experimental, bored high school version and meet her then-boyfriend, Adam. Gradually, we learn that Aubrey's transit through young adulthood involved some deeply traumatic experiences which were compounded in part by her inability to trust her best friend. For years, she's walled off her feelings, becoming increasingly emotionally detached. Aubrey's future happiness depends on her ability not only to recognize what happened, but to be able to tell others without fear of reprisal. The first-person narration has a guarded, angry tone: "Who put the word 'fun' in funeral? If you really think about it, funeral sounds like it should be synonymous with 'carnival' or 'funnel cake.' But I can't think of anything fun about Rachel's funeral, except for the fact that she won't be there." The book's strident pacing, combined with its unsparing portrayal of teenage cruelty and thoughtlessness, makes Aubrey's eventual confrontation with her past a welcome relief. However, despite Aubrey's warped perspective, Fam manages to carve out enough space for the supporting characters to believably exist within the maelstrom of Aubrey's raw emotions.By sardonically inhabiting the solipsistic, emotionally fraught reality of adolescence, Fam creates a startling coming-of-age story that is neither sentimental nor cliched.

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