“I felt that it was making me stupid, but in an interesting way.”

So says the narrator in Cassiopeia, one of the short stories that comprise Benjamin Nugent’s Fraternity, and so say I, after reading this book.

This is not a knock on Nugent’s writing, which is lovely, but a comment on the behavior of the characters in Fraternity, who bare their soles to the reader while trying to pretend at myriad things that feed their own insecurities and the social demands of fraternity and campus life.

The stories are all interrelated and form a good, solid cohesive whole, though they range around in intrigue and overall quality. Despite the presence of several characters who show up consistently throughout the collection, their development is on the thin side, and Nugent’s way with words and ability to tell a good story are far superior to the book’s success in allowing the reader to truly know or care about its characters.

This is essentially the same topic and the same format as Genevieve Sly Crane’s Sorority, which was more relatable and character driven.

The best of the stories in Fraternity include: God, Fan Fiction. Cassiopeia, and Safe Spaces.

This collection of short stories involves serious issues that are unfortunately associated with fraternities. The stories are well-written and are loosely related to each other, but I found some stories more impactful than others. I'd recommend this as a book club selection for college students as this could lead to some good discussions among friends.

Frat Bros in a New World
Perhaps the main character of Benjamin Nugent’s Fraternity: Stories is the Greek frat house itself: a beat colonial housing the Delta Zeta Chi at a liberal college in a woodsy Massachusetts town. From a sexually fluid thinker, a judgmental alumni and DZC’s wooden mascot, another alumni who isn’t who he seems on paper, and a coke addict/dealer in love with a girl whose friends want to keep them apart to a bro dealing with a confusing sexual experience by talking with his mother, these odd characters in even stranger circumstances are associated by common (and complicated) human emotions and by the roof over their heads.

Wendy Ward
http://wendyrward.tumblr.com/

In his newest collection of short fiction, Ben Nugent has captured the spirit of America’s disassociation with the true gravity of twenty-first century college life. In generations past, books like Valley of the Dolls, The Things They Carried, Election, The Outsiders, Perks of Being A Wallflower, Carrie, Ghost World, The Virgin Suicides, The Chocolate War, A Separate Peace, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (among many, many others since then), have given us a peek into the traumatic and debilitating internal lives of high schoolers – the very same lives that either we were spared from, or have chosen to suppress deep in our minds. Nugent’s Fraternity, however, exists in a post-Brock Turner world; one where the sheer magnitude of the Updikean post-grad traumatic existence, the very shore we build our future selves upon, is a pile of dirt where one’s similarly garbage crown worn only for a short time span can remain on their heads for the rest of their lives.

The world we live in is different now. One where our graduates are assumed to attend college and then enter this new universe of beleaguered suffering and emotional intransience. One where the boundaries of rape and the narrow alleyways of ‘adulting’ can be difficult to navigate for some. Where hearing a ‘no’ and not saying it in front of a crowd of people can have reverberations for decades.

And it is through the lens of these decades, and the brilliantly constructed emotional worlds of Nugent’s characters that we get the true mirror of Fraternity reflecting our current world. We live in a world that is a result of the mistakes, escapes, and pure humiliations of these stories. Nugent’s characters seem to bleed off the page into our hands, as we have experienced this very world either in entertaining the whims of our bosses, spouses, successes, and failures. We watch the same choices being made over and over again, and seem to careen our cars off the same cliffs as if we learned the somethings he writes about when we were in the driver seat of our similarly energetic and indeterminable fates.

We didn’t know what we were doing then, and I am not sure we know any more about our mistakes today… But Nugent’s captivating portrait of these young, directionless, and forgivable undergraduates seems to be the same strange universe we are a part of today, as if the ribbon of time has remained connected and pulled us back to show us what tremendous neuroses we have inflicted upon ourselves and our culture… and fundamentally, precisely where they began.

I was able to read this book thanks to NetGalley. It was a quick entertaining read. I was be recommending this one to all of my friends. It’s a good summer read.

This was a quirky collection of loosely connected short stories. I liked it, but didn't love it, and I'm not sure who I would even recommend it for.
The fraternity is what linked all of the characters and their stories, but not very much of the book was actually about fraternity life itself.
3.25

Rating system (Updated)

5 - Perfection. Every sentence, every image, every character. The book woke up like this.

4 - Would Recommend. This book may be up your alley.

3 - Enjoyable but came with emotional baggage from a previous relationship. Still would recommend to another.

2 - Ghostwriting Achievement. Author died halfway through and their kid finished it.

1 - Ride to Hell: Retribution. Kill it with fire.


I received a copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is like opening a fresh can of beer, participating in rush week for fraternites and sororities, is filled with existential college dread, and good old-fashioned causal fucking. Nugent has a choir filled with characters with their own distinct, voices and range. It creates, in a sense, a book of stories where nothing feels the same other than the fact that everyone knows the other.

Characters recur throughout; the closeted Oprah appears in two stories, and so does Nutella, the former president of the fraternity at the center of the stories. But still, as I said previously, each character has their own voice. They have their own flair and zest. It gives the stories life and makes me feel as if I know them, even in this short space. It's hard to do that as a writer and I think Nugent achieves this desired effect.

This is also a compliment to the writing. Nugent's prose is imagery riddled, and ornate when it needs to be. The narrators drive the stylistic choices that Nugent employs in his writing. Some characters are very eloquent like Oprah and the narrator in "Cassiopeia" while others have a more clipped, informal style like the narrator in "Ollie the Owl." However all of them are incredibly balls to the walls wild and are the party animals that start mosh pits in the middle of a school dance. Each story is imaginative, unique, and just shows the crazy shenanigans these college kids are up to now that they are not at home.

When Nugent writes, boy does he write. There are several lines and passages that I have highlighted in the e-book review copy. His writing is solid and clear, without leaving the reader wondering where the fuck they are or forcing them to ask what the fuck is going on. He doesn't drop readers in the middle of the woods of a sentence and expects them to find their way into the dark, no he is right there without holding the reader's hand. No, he's the voice in the dark we are told to follow.

All praise aside, you must be wondering why I'm sitting at three stars. I debated in the shower under the fog of marijuana on my rating and decided, after feeling the power within, that this book was in fact an enjoyable read. It's something to take my mind off the fact that I read Toni Morrison's Beloved, am trapped with the Cordova family in Night Film, and am struggling with Swing Time by Zadie Smith. This book is not mere popcorn literature or something to take your mind off the fact that the planet is dying and America is burning. This is a book that instead traps you in the existential crises of college students.

It's a fine mixtape. The strongest stories are at the end and the beginning. The middle is slush, explicit, sexual flush. Forced oral sex and an owl with a strap-on are the least of your worries. The average of the story ratings is actually two-stars and since I rate story collections based on the average score of the stories, I was going to put this at two-stars. It also felt to me that the book was scared to come for fraternites. It would paint the most vile depictions of hazing you can get, and still whenever it started to show the ugly side of fraternities, it crept back into its shell of loud music, cheap beer, and casual sex. I wanted Nugent to take the plunge and criticize fraternites, come for the air of toxic masculinity that surrounds it, and thoroughly drag them through the dirt. But that didn't happen. It would start to, and then it would withdraw, scared, leaving me with the taste of vaginal hair in my mouth and an urge to rant about frats in an essay--"Hazing: Abolishing Fraternities in Thirteen Points."

Nugent's writing pulled me back in. The prose is what bumped this read up to three stars. Even if I was squirming during his depiction of oral sex, I was still in awe of how realistic it got, and how it felt like I was right there, going down on someone like the character was. It all came down to the prose, the characters, and the sense of uniqueness that came through each story.

Nugent is a strong writer, a great storyteller, and this is my first book. I'm not sure if he's published anything else. But I would consider purchasing another one of his works.

This book is funny, homoerotic and smells of state beer.

I went into this collection expecting something a little bit different... maybe a little more criticism of greek life. Nugent definitely toed the line with consent in a couple stories, but didn't go far enough for me. The book is not meant to be a criticism though. Benjamin Nugent is a really good writer, but he simply could not make me care about frat guys. I adore!!!! this cover, though.

I recall reading an excerpt in the Paris Review. This novel has got me from the opening paragraph. "We called her God because she wrote a poem about how Caleb Newton ejaculated prematurely the night she slept with him, and because she shared the poem with her friends." People writing narratives that capture privilege, take note. This is how you do it. These sentences are alert. Looking forward to diving in deeper.

I was lucky enough to get an advance copy of Benjamin Nugent's Fraternity, and burned through it pretty quickly. In it, life around in a unnamed university frat house is told from different perspectives by multiple frat brothers and characters who circumstances find them passing through the house. It's definitely not "Animal House", though there seem to be nods to the film that capture the crazy antics of a partying frat. It goes a little deeper into sexuality, addiction, peer pressure, the pressure of the "real world" after college and a look at some questionable hazing rituals. It's raw, and Nugent's style really paint a picture where you can practically smell the stale beer that permeates the rug in the house. An interesting read.

Fraternity captures the awfulness of the fraternity system very well, and sets the scene for a lot of male behaviour later on in life. These young men think they are untouchable, and are at the same time strangely vulnerable. They are none of them very sympathetic people to cheer for, and this is where the stories fall down a bit. There are no real consequences for the bad things that they do, although rhat is realistic.