Author sticks close to home

The Topeka School, Ben Lerner’s outstanding third work of ­fiction (his seventh book if you count three of poetry and one nonfiction titled The Hatred of Poetry), comes garlanded with cover plaudits from his eminent contemporaries on both sides of the Atlantic: Sally Rooney, Maggie Nelson, Claudia Rankine, ­Rachel Kushner, Hilton Als. It is significant that four out of these five are women given that Lerner’s novel, indeed his oeuvre, might perhaps uncharitably be seen as mas