I would like to thank Net galley as well as Knopf Publishing for the opportunity to read this as an ARC.
I really liked Lee Cole's first book, Groundskeeping and so wanted to read his second. Fulfillment is in the same vein as Groundskeeping, a slow thoughtful character study of every day people . The prose is beautifully written.The story does move a bit slowly for me, and a few times I wanted to shake the characters and say"snap out of it"! Overall, however, I feel that it was really well done. Emmett and Joel are half brothers.They both grew up in Kentucky but Joel is now a professor in New York and has written a book. He is coming home to visit his family, with his wife Alice. Emmett has just been fired from his job at Outback and is also back home. He has a job at an Amazon like facility , where he sorts shipment orders. Both Emmett and Joel are unhappy, but neither wants to admit it. Joel seems like he has everything, but his marriage is shaky and he is battling depression. Emmett wants to be a screen writer,but has been drifting between jobs.Alice, has left a PHD program to marry Joel, but seems happiest when she is planting and working in the garden.Three people who are searching for , well if not fulfillment, maybe some purpose or definition in life.As I said it is a bit slow, but I gave it 4 stars ( rounded up from 3.5)just for the sheer beauty of the writing.

Two brothers, Joel and Emmett and Alice Joel’s wife are all unhappy. None of them have managed to fulfill their dreams. You can feel the explosive tension between them. They look for fulfillment but often in the wrong places. I found it very thought provoking.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Slow, thoughtful look at the state of the American dream, told through the lens of two brothers from a working class family in Kentucky. One has "made it" -- education, a white-collar job in academia with a book deal and a wife -- the other is still figuring things out, working in an Amazon-like shipping hub. It is not a spoiler to say that the American dream is as much an illusion for these characters as it was for the characters in the midcentury novels of suburbia.

Cole's writing is sharp, and his eye for modern America is good. I've loved Groundskeeping, his first novel, and liked this one a lot. I appreciate the middle America stories he's telling and I hope he keeps that perspective.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

“Fulfillment” is a novel by Lee Cole. This book takes place in Kentucky and follows two brothers - Emmett and Joel. This book just missed the mark for me. I didn’t really like any of the characters and for the longest time nothing really seems to happen and just rather lay there for the most part. Also, it was a bit of a depressing read at times. I found Cole’s writing style interesting, but not interesting enough for me to enjoy the book as much as I hoped to.

Lee Cole can write! Having loved his previous novel Groundskeeping, I was thrilled to read Fulfillment and was not disappointed.

Set in Peducah, Kentucky, this is a novel with three main characters: Half-brothers Joel and Emmett, and Joel's wife, Alice.

I don't want to spoil anything from the plot. At the heart of it, this is a book about the fulfillment of imperfection - of things not going "as planned" - of rethinking things and following your bliss. Life is not perfect but there's peace and fulfillment in the ride. The writing is beautiful and I love how Kentucky is like another character in the novel representing Home and Failure.

I highly recommend this one. Thanks to the publisher for the advanced copy!

Fulfillment is the story of two brothers in middle America: Emmett and Joel. Emmett is solidly working class, his full time job being as a package handler for a behemoth warehouse. Emmett wants to be a screenwriter and has taken modest steps in that direction, but it’s pretty obvious to the reader that it’s likely fruitless. Joel, on the other hand, is a successful author and professor. They’re in their late twenties and back home in Kentucky at the Dream Home, their mother’s house.

I wanted to like this book more than I actually liked it. It’s slow and while dramatic things happen, it also feels like there’s not much story. The characters aren’t particularly likable or tangible, and for me, the story plodded along to almost nowhere. I can see why people might like Fulfillment, especially if they can identify with either Emmett or Joel, but this didn’t work for me.

I was able to power through to the end after a short break. 3 stars. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fulfillment is about...fulfillment but in ways that are not often discovered. I couldn't decide what I wanted to happen in the end with the relationships, and that is a testament to the rich characters and plot drawn by Cole. I love reading about Appalachia, and Fulfillment is one of the best.

Thanks to Netgalley and Knopf for the ebook. A fun trio of characters set across the American South. There’s Joel, an academic and successful author and his half brother, Emmett, whose empty life is caught up in the ugly dramas of working for a big shipping warehouse. In the middle of these two, is Alice, Joel’s wife. She’s caught between Joel’s steadiness and Emmett’s passion for something new. Is Joel simply too rigid and Emmett a dreamer with no plans for the future? An interesting tale of how we live now.

Reading an author’s second book after loving their debut is always an anxious endeavor. However, Lee Cole’s “Groundedkeeper” exceeded my expectations and left me thoroughly impressed.

The intriguing premise of the book piqued my interest, and I eagerly received an ARC. To my delight, “Groundedkeeper” surpassed even Cole’s debut in terms of brilliance.

Cole’s remarkable ability to craft complex characters with ease in simple language is truly awe-inspiring. I was instantly captivated by the main character, Emmett, and found myself rooting for him throughout his complex relationships. While I’ll refrain from revealing too many plot details, readers will appreciate the novel’s tranquil atmosphere, despite its underlying complexity.

I also appreciate Cole’s unique talent in transforming the setting into a character in its own right. It was also particularly intriguing to witness the vivid portrayal of Kentucky, with subtle nods to today’s divisive political climate.

I highly recommend that you pick up “Groundedkeeper” when it’s released on June 17, 2025. In the meantime, I suggest you read “Groundedkeeper” to keep you entertained until then. Trust me, you’ll thoroughly enjoy both books!

Fufillment felt as if the author tried too hard at a complelling and dramatic narrative. The novel kept me involved enough to finish, but at times I felt like it was plodding along to accommodate the many, and at times, overpowering emotions. Thank you to NetGalley.

This is a family tale about two very different brothers, their dreams and aspirations, and the ways in which each of them tries to eclipse the other. As the title intimates, both brothers are unfulfilled in their lives and looking, sometimes in the wrong direction, for ways to find the peace and fulfillment they are seeking.

Beautifully written, compelling at times and thought-provoking, Fulfillment is a hard look at class, family dynamics and privilege.

Thank you, NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage and Anchor for the eARC.

From the very first page, this book draws you into its world with engaging prose, well-developed characters, and a compelling narrative. The author's storytelling is confident and immersive, weaving together themes that resonate long after the final chapter.

Enjoyable. And admirable too for its refusal - largely - of the grand gesture in favor of something more ordinary and oddly true.
It’s a modest novel, easily readable, not a ‘big’ book, although long. The characters are quotidian. But there’s warmth and subtlety here, and an incisiveness that belies the humdrum lives.
I was impressed.

3.5, rounded up. Cole's debut novel, [book:Groundskeeping|58395053] was one of my favorite discoveries of 2022, about a callow, un-self-aware late-20-something guy's development from college groundskeeper into an emerging writer.

In <i>Fulfillment</i>, he returns to his native terrain of Kentucky, and again collides educated coastal elites with rural, working-class white people, whom he renders with genuine empathy and zero condescension. The MFA-program quality of the prose is uniformly high throughout, polished to a <i>New Yorker</i> story sheen, and the plot chugs forward with propulsive force.

Cole deftly braids three narrative threads, as his focus shifts amongst the main characters in a classic love triangle: itinerant cultural-studies PhD Joel, his deeply dissatisfied wife Alice, and his aimless half-brother Emmett. Self-satisfied and sanctimonious Joel moves from New York back to his hometown in small-town Kentucky for a year's lectureship, and back into the modular home of his long-suffering mother Kathy, taking Alice with him as she figures out what to do with her life after impulsively marrying Joel and abandoning graduate school. Drifting back homeward after a long series of low-wage jobs in the service industry, Emmett finds back-breaking work unloading shipping containers at an Amazon-like warehouse (a <i>fulfillment</i> center). Many of his socio-political observations felt trite and forced, or preaching to the already-converted.

It should come as no surprise that none of these three main characters is feeling remotely fulfilled with their lives, emotionally, intellectually, or spiritually. Or even knows how that would be possible.

And all of them have different variants of the malaise of late capitalism, and Cole describes them with brutal, unsparing honesty. I didn’t care that these were not likeable or relatable characters, and I was impressed with how Cole deftly peeled back their layers of psychic damage and generational trauma through well-told flashbacks.

Alice is too young to be plausibly referencing mid-1980s Springsteen in her love-notes to Emmett, but the emotional spareness and honesty of Cole’s kitchen-sink realism echoes Bruce’s classic song “Highway Patrolman” from <i>Nebraska</i> (“Man turns his back on his family/ Well he just ain't no good”).

It's not a spoiler to mention that Alice's affair with Emmett is the mainspring of the plot (it's right there on the jacket flap copy). And in its violent intensity, the brotherly rivalry reaches Sam Shepard proportions (<i>True West</i> is the touchstone here and a quotation from the play serves as the novel’s epigraph).

There are breathtaking moments and scenes throughout, and Cole is an impressive prose stylist, but he was swinging for the fences here, and doesn’t always connect.

I loved Groundskeeping, and couldn’t wait for Lee Cole’s follow-up. Fulfillment is wonderful! With precise, lyrical prose, Cole explores the malaise so present today through the lens of Emmett Shaw, his brother Joel, and sister in law Alice. In post-pandemic Kentucky, these flawed characters fumble through their lives best as they can, for better or for worse. A beautiful, unforgettable book. So many thanks for NetGalley and Knopf for the opportunity to read and review this amazing eArc.

These three young adults are unhappy with their lives but don’t know how to change. They are powder kegs waiting to explode. As with his first novel, Groundskeeping, which I loved, dialog is written sans quotation marks.

For once in his life, he had been a part of something bigger than himself. from Fulfillment by Lee Cole

You reach your thirties and wonder, is this all there is? is this all I am? Do I settle for the life I was given, or do I look for a larger life, a life of meaning, for fulfillment? What is my purpose? Is it too late to change course?

Half brothers Emmett and Joel have completely different lives; Emmett is a college dropout working in a massive Kentucky warehouse sorting packages. Joel is married, a college professor and author, living in New York City. Emmett dreams of writing a screenplay. Joel is on antidepressants, and is alienated from his free spirited wife Alice who dreams of rural life with a garden. Joel is teaching near his hometown, and he and Alice are staying with his mother. Emmett visits on weekends.

These three young adults are unhappy with their lives but don’t know how to change. They are powder kegs waiting to explode.

Lee Cole’s stunning sophomore novel dissects a family in crisis, their bonds strained to the breaking point. It is about the American South, and class, brotherhood, and what really matters.

The path is messy and divisive, but each character undergoes an epiphany, finally taking control of their lives and finding fulfillment.

Gritty, truthful, inspirational.

Thanks to A. A. Knopf for a free book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it. I am grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advance copy.

"Fulfillment" by Lee Cole is a sharp and deeply felt novel that examines family, ambition, and the shifting landscape of the American South. With keen insight and elegant prose, Cole crafts a story that lingers, exploring class, privilege, and the search for purpose in an ever-changing world.

College professor Joel, who has written an academically successful book, is married to Alice, a woman tiring of domestic life and longing for something else. When he returns to his hometown in Kentucky for a visiting teaching job, he is reunited with his family including half brother, Emmett. Emmett has never quite gotten it together. A college dropout who aspires to being a screen writer, his present job, in a long list of them, is at an online store fulfillment center. As a relationship develops between Alice and Emmett, lives spiral out of control.

How do we find fulfillment in our lives? As each of the main characters in this well written, complex novel strives to find it, Cole paints a realistic picture of present day American rural south and our contemporary political culture. Family, guilt, class, longing, resentment, yearning….it is all here, along with insight into the different Americas that have been ripped apart by the politics of our times. As with his first novel, Groundskeeping, which I loved, dialog is written sans quotation marks.