Danzy Senna's debut novel, Caucasia, chronicled a young girl's coming of age while being forced to pass for white. That richly detailed book won wide acclaim, a slew of awards (including the Whiting Writers Award and the ALA's Alex Award for adult books for young adults), and was duly added to the curriculum at middle schools and universities nationwide.

In her second book, Symptomatic, Senna stakes out new territory. While the main character has just graduated from college, this is not a book for kids. Both the content and the style are distinctly for adults. An oft-repeated observation of Caucasia was that it turned the stereotypical "tragic mulatto" character on its head. Senna says she bristled at this line of commentary, wondering, "What if I want to write about a really fucked-up mixed race character?" In her new book, Symptomatic, Senna does just that.

The unnamed narrator of Symptomatic is a young woman who has recently graduated from an unnamed Bay Area university for a competitive fellowship at an unnamed New York glossy. The narrator keeps details not only from the reader, but also from the other characters in the book.

Initially at least, most of what we learn about the narrator and her boyfriend is who their friends and family are. Hers are "unreachable," off saving or exploring the world; his are local, racist, and rich. All share a disdain for her day job at the magazine as middle-class bourgeois nonsense. As her brother puts it, "Do people still read this shit?"

Alienated in the city—she's staying at an inexpensive women's hotel, and never seems to be invited to any happening New York magazine parties—she moves in too quickly with Andrew, the white boy whom she met on the subway. She neglects to tell him that although she looks white, her dad is black.

It's not long before one of his high school friends puts on black face during a charades game and mocks the speech of the woman who cleaned their dorm at prep school. This leads to a new game: free associating random stuff-any-black-person-has-said-or-done. Just as when an audience starts yelling warnings to the characters in a horror film, many readers will want to offer the narrator some advice about what to say or do. Instead, the narrator retreats to the bathroom, and soon starts looking for a new apartment.

The narrator's co-worker, Greta, knows of an available single sublet. Greta, too, is new at the magazine, but is middle-aged and generally seems to try too hard. Out of a sense of obligation for helping her find new digs, the narrator offers to take her out to dinner. Greta is also biracial and passes for white, at least among white folks; the connection is clearly more important to Greta, who's looking for a friendship. A wobbly one begins. "This isn't what I'd imagined for my grown-up life in New York," the narrator muses. "But for now this was all I had."

It's not entirely clear just what the narrator did imagine in this foreign country, the East Coast. For her, New York is a place to escape from rather than explore; she hurries "from the damp, cavelike darkness of a train station to the artificial light of my office twelve stories above ground. The earth itself was temporary—something to rush over in hard-soled shoes on your way to the next level."

While she's trying to find her footing, the narrator has positive, if brief, interactions with a few other older women. Her boss at work and a tenant in her apartment, as well as a couple in her memory, are touchstones, models of warm women she can grow up to be.

When Greta starts overstepping her bounds, the narrator can either, say, attribute an off-color comment to an extra drink or take it as a warning sign. But the narrator's internal compass is off, and Greta's behavior quickly shifts from friendly to obsessive. She spies on the narrator's (business) meeting with a man, and becomes openly jealous and verbally abusive. Once fastidious in her appearance, Greta becomes slovenly. Even when Greta dramatically backs off, the action continues to escalate with a thriller's intensity.

The narrator's privacy alerts the reader from the beginning to be on the lookout for clues about who she is and what the events around her may lead to. Senna credits her reader with being able to fill in the gaps of what is left unsaid about identity, friendship, and obsession.