On the first page of Lonely Crowds, the protagonist Ruth makes a powerful observation: “When I met Maria, I learned that without an obsession life was impossible to live. I’d forgotten. Now, I remembered.” This observation becomes so inherent—a structure of life—that it sinks down into the text. Forgotten, it becomes the bones of the narrative. When we follow Ruth into her darkest moments and contemplations, as well as to her happiest moments—where, perhaps, she knows most clearly what she wants—we are encircling obsession. An obsession that both gives life and threatens it. He who is near me is near the fire. Our strongest obsession, whether secular or spiritual, is the fire. We must warm ourselves to be saved from the cold. But we must also keep from falling in.
Author Stephanie Wambugu was born in Kenya and grew up in Rhode Island. She received her MFA from Columbia University in New York and is currently an editor of Joyland magazine. Lonely Crowds draws on Wambugu’s upbringing in Rhode Island and time spent in New York City’s art culture. It is the author’s first novel—and a brilliant debut.
Ruth is a Black woman growing up in Rhode Island with her close friend Maria, who comes from a difficult background. After Maria’s parents died, she was raised by an aunt who descended into schizophrenia. Maria demonstrates herself as an intelligent and creative young person, and Ruth’s parents informally adopt her into their home. Ruth is attached to Maria from the moment they meet, and her early forays into illustration and painting include portraits of Maria. On the other hand, Maria’s attachment to Ruth is not as apparent.
The most obvious reference drawn from Ruth’s name, and one that stands as a major theme of the novel, is the biblical Book of Ruth. Our protagonist shares her name with an ancient Moabite woman, a foreigner to Israel, who gives up everything to stay with her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi. The Ruth of Lonely Crowds cleaves closely to Maria, attempting to stay by her side, whatever it takes. This loyalty includes dual admission to Bard College and later sharing an apartment in New York City. This connection, perhaps not surprisingly, takes on a sexual dimension.
Ruth and Maria’s relationship forms the spine of the novel, by which every other nerve ending—of lacking guardians, the pursuit of art, sexual partners of both genders, experiments with drugs and alcohol, and navigating New York in the 1990s—branches out. The novel is incredibly rich in observations on all aspects of life, but again and again, we return to Maria.
Maria is a daemonic character, in the sense of being a powerful, uncontrollable force that pulls Ruth along. Indeed, Maria also reads as a lifelong sociopath, one that Ruth, out of love, cannot detect—or is not concerned about, in any case. When Maria orders Ruth to destroy some precious portraits of her, then later includes recorded video footage of Ruth in a public art exhibition, Ruth quickly and casually brushes off the hypocrisy. If a situation seems to please Maria, it is generally fine with Ruth. Even more stunning is a moment later in the novel, when we discover that Maria has been intercepting letters of a delicate nature addressed to Ruth and has already destroyed them. Ruth concludes, “I understood we needed strong people to make the choices for us that we didn’t have the courage to make for ourselves, and that I should be grateful she threw those letters out on my behalf.”
Perhaps the core riddle of the novel is the nature of Ruth herself. Is she inherently a passive person, “meant” to be dragged along by whatever stronger force—regardless of toxicity—becomes her obsession? Her emotionally absent parents and statements of a near-nihilistic philosophy suggest this. Ruth ponders that we have no control over our lives and that we cling to tradition, represented by her Catholic upbringing. As a child, she was forced to absorb a deeply bleak monologue from her father, who declares that suffering in life is constant and only gets worse. Ruth’s pursuit of art and her clinging to Maria act as escapes from the seemingly pointless work-and-sleep lifestyles of her parents.
Ruth, however, cannot escape the numbness inside, even to the point of comedy. A moment comes later in the novel where Ruth, as a gesture of friendliness, purchases alcoholic drinks for a group of underage students. When this is pointed out to her, she wonders why “none of them had said [they were underage],” then decides “they were definitely already drinking anyway; there wasn’t anything I could do to prevent it.”
Maria, the center of Ruth’s obsession, is someone we do not fully understand. Perhaps we and Ruth never can. Maria strives forward to create her art, and she does not seem to register those around her as individuals. Her treatment of Ruth is disturbingly negligent, coming finally to a point that threatens to destroy Ruth’s existence. Maria is a bright fire of life, but not a fire that can reciprocate love.
Many of the greatest novels are about loneliness. The increasing awareness of an individual brings the discovery of differences between ourselves and others. Many chapters of Lonely Crowds end with Ruth or another character attempting to share a connection with someone else. The other person completely misunderstands the point, or worse, shows a plain disinterest. Ruth may believe this is a fundamental, inescapable phenomenon of life, one that feeds her growing detachment. Art—difficult and full of frustrations—might nevertheless be the only practice in life that brings true connection.
FICTION
By Stephanie Wambugu
Little, Brown and Company
Published July 29, 2025
