Regina Porter's spectacular second novel, The Rich People Have Gone Away, deepens and widens the possibilities of storytelling about the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the heart of the multilayered, multiperspective novel are Brooklynites Theodore Harper and Darla Jacobson, a couple in an open marriage who are expecting their first child. One day early in the pandemic, the two decide to leave for a week at Darla's family's summer cottage in upstate New York. On a hike en route, they quarrel and Darla goes missing. The fight, which was ostensibly about Theo revealing that his great-great grandfather was Black and Darla wanting each of them to sell their apartments to buy a Park Slope brownstone together, touches on two of the novel's central themes: identity and real estate. To that end, Theo is a professional aesthetic adviser, and one of his lovers is a real estate broker. Porter (The Travelers) also divides the novel into three parts, and each opens with an epigraph that defines an architectural term: door, doorframe, and threshold.
Although Darla's disappearance propels the plot, much of the novel is concerned with relationships, especially parental ones, which are intricately detailed, including those of Xavier Curtis, a teenage relative of one of Theo's neighbors; Theo himself; and Darla's best friend, Ruby Tabitha Black. Black's is the only first-person narrative, and it's one of the widest ranging, following her from childhood to her college travails to her current 30-something self.
The Rich People Have Gone Away is deeply felt and marvelously heartbreaking. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator