Rob Franklin’s debut novel Great Black Hope arrives like a punch to the solar plexus—elegant, devastating, and impossible to ignore. This is not merely another coming-of-age story about a young Black man navigating privilege and prejudice. Instead, Franklin has crafted something far more complex: a searing examination of what it means to exist in the liminal spaces between worlds, where class can protect but race cannot, where respectability politics collide with the messiness of human existence.
The novel follows Smith, a Stanford-educated queer Black man whose cocaine possession arrest in the Hamptons sets off a chain of events that forces him to confront uncomfortable truths about himself, his deceased best friend Elle, and the precarious nature of his place in American society. Franklin, who holds degrees from Stanford and NYU’s MFA program, writes with the precision of someone who has inhabited these spaces intimately.
A Masterclass in Character Development
Smith: The Reluctant Protagonist
Smith emerges as one of the most compelling protagonists in recent literary fiction. Franklin refuses to make him entirely sympathetic—he’s privileged, sometimes selfish, and prone to the kind of self-absorption that comes with having options others don’t. Yet he’s also genuinely vulnerable, caught between the expectations of his accomplished family (his father runs a historically Black university) and his own desire to simply exist without the weight of representation.
The genius of Franklin’s characterization lies in how he presents Smith’s internal contradictions without judgment. When Smith attends court-mandated treatment sessions, he mentally distances himself from other participants, drawing lines between his “different boat” and theirs. It’s a moment of ugly honesty that reveals how deeply internalized respectability politics run, even among those who should know better.
Elle: More Than a Beautiful Corpse
Elle England, Smith’s deceased roommate and best friend, could have easily become a manic pixie dream girl trope or a cautionary tale about privilege gone wrong. Instead, Franklin renders her as a fully realized character even in death. Through Smith’s memories and the media coverage surrounding her overdose, we see Elle as both magnetic and mysterious—a young woman who “craved people” and “basked in their beauty and chaos.”
The tabloid coverage of Elle’s death (“Socialite Elle England, Dead at 25”) serves as a sharp critique of how the media consumes and commodifies Black women’s pain. Franklin’s handling of this element is particularly skillful, showing how even sympathetic coverage can reduce a complex person to symbols and narratives.
The Architecture of Privilege
Class as Shield, Race as Target
One of the novel’s greatest strengths is its nuanced exploration of how privilege operates. Smith’s Stanford education, his family’s social standing, and his lawyer’s expensive suit provide protection that money can buy. Yet Franklin is clear-eyed about the limits of this protection. As Smith’s lawyer explains with chilling pragmatism, the narrative is simple: “Here’s a good kid who messed up, got peer-pressured into a onetime thing.”
The courtroom scenes are particularly powerful, showcasing how the justice system functions differently for those who can afford good representation. When Smith appears before the judge, she comments on how “great” he looks in his suit—a moment that crystallizes how respectability performance becomes a survival mechanism.
Literary Craft and Style
Prose That Cuts Deep
Franklin’s prose is both elegant and accessible, with a rhythm that echoes the nightlife scenes it often depicts. His sentences can be sparse and cutting—”The Negro is comparison,” he quotes from a Frantz Fanon book—or lush and atmospheric when describing the Manhattan social scene. The writing adapts to its subject matter without losing its distinct voice.
The novel’s structure is particularly effective, moving between Smith’s present-day struggles with the court system and his memories of life with Elle. This non-linear approach allows Franklin to gradually reveal the complexity of their relationship and the circumstances surrounding Elle’s death without resorting to cheap reveals or melodrama.
Authenticity in Detail
Franklin’s background shows in every detail, from the specific dynamics of Black elite social circles to the mundane realities of mandated drug treatment. The virtual therapy sessions with Dr. Mancini are particularly well-observed, capturing both the absurdity and the genuine need for such programs. Similarly, the descriptions of Smith’s family home in Atlanta’s Cascade neighborhood feel lived-in and specific.
Thematic Resonance
The Burden of Representation
The novel’s title carries multiple meanings, all of them weighted with irony. Smith is positioned as a “great Black hope” by virtue of his education and family background, yet he’s also aware of how easily that status can be stripped away. The pressure to be respectable, to represent his race “properly,” becomes a form of psychological imprisonment.
Franklin explores how this burden affects different characters in different ways. Smith’s father champions a dress code at his university that bans “inappropriate attire,” including what the administration refers to as cross-dressing. The scene where Smith watches a protest against this policy from his bathroom window is heartbreaking in its portrayal of internalized oppression and missed opportunities for solidarity.
Friendship and Loss
The relationship between Smith and Elle serves as the novel’s emotional core. Their friendship is portrayed with genuine affection and complexity—they’re not just friends but co-conspirators in navigating elite spaces that weren’t designed for them. Elle’s death forces Smith to confront how well we can truly know another person, a theme that gains additional resonance in our age of social media performances and curated identities.
Areas for Growth
Pacing and Structure
While the non-linear structure generally serves the story well, there are moments where the pacing feels uneven. Some of the Atlanta sections, while beautifully written, occasionally feel disconnected from the main narrative thrust. “Great Black Hope” sometimes struggles to balance its various thematic concerns with its plot momentum.
Secondary Characters
Characters like Carolyn and Smith’s family members, while competently drawn, sometimes feel more like functions of the plot than fully realized individuals. This is particularly noticeable given how vividly Franklin renders Smith and Elle, even in flashback.
Cultural Context and Comparisons
Franklin’s work exists in conversation with other recent novels exploring similar themes. Readers will find echoes of Kiley Reid’s “Such a Fun Age” in its exploration of performative allyship and racial dynamics, though Franklin’s focus is more internal and psychological. The novel also shares DNA with Hanya Yanagihara’s “A Little Life“ in its unflinching examination of how trauma shapes friendships, though Franklin’s work is more grounded in specific cultural and class dynamics.
The book’s exploration of queer Black identity and class anxiety also brings to mind Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous“, though Franklin’s approach is more directly political and less poetic.
The Verdict
Great Black Hope is a remarkable debut that announces Franklin as a major new voice in American literary fiction. The novel succeeds because it refuses easy answers or simple morality tales. Instead, it offers something more valuable: a clear-eyed examination of how race, class, and sexuality intersect in contemporary America.
Franklin’s background in both creative writing and activism (he co-founded Art for Black Lives) informs every page without ever making the novel feel didactic. This is literary fiction that engages with social issues without sacrificing the pleasures of good storytelling—complex characters, sharp dialogue, and sentences that sing.
The novel’s exploration of grief, friendship, and the weight of expectations will resonate with readers long after they finish the final page. While it’s not a perfect book—few debuts are—it’s an essential one, offering insights into the complexities of modern Black identity that feel both timely and timeless.
Similar Reads
If you enjoyed Great Black Hope, consider these titles:
- “Such a Fun Age” by Kiley Reid – Another sharp examination of race and class dynamics in contemporary America
- “The Vanishing Half” by Brit Bennett – Explores themes of identity, family, and the performance of race
- “Real Life” by Brandon Taylor – A powerful debut about a queer Black graduate student navigating academia and identity
- “Memorial” by Bryan Washington – Examines relationships, family, and identity through a queer lens
- “Cleanness” by Garth Greenwell – Though focused on white identity, offers similar psychological depth in exploring queerness and self-acceptance