Sag Harbor Book

This was the perfect book to read in late summer, as well as a nice introduction** to the writing of Colson Whitehead. It's more like a 4.5 star book, but I'm rounding up because the writing is so good and the author captures this era so effectively. I'm definitely going to read more by him.

It's the summer of 1985 and 15-year-old Benji is, as usual, at his family's place on the eponymous Sag Harbor, a small village in the Hamptons populated during the season by upper-middle class, professional African-Americans.

Not much happens. Unlike most coming-of-age books, there's no big goal, nothing leading up to a life-altering event. In that respect, it's life-like. Changes happen slowly; family tensions gradually build up. Three whole months are enough to reinvent yourself before going back to your mostly-white Manhattan private school, right? Maybe, maybe not, especially if you're a Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd like Benji, who wants to be called Ben from now on because it's more grown-up sounding.

Benji (no one, it turns out, ends up calling him Ben) gets a job at the local ice cream parlour; he hangs out with friends he only sees in the summer (they're sprawled around the New York-New Jersey area during the rest of the year); together, they discuss the changing music (rap/hip-hop is just emerging) and play around with BB guns; they pack into a car driven by that slightly older friend who's got his license (suddenly riding your bike is déclassé); and then there's the question of girls...

The eight chapters are rounded like short stories, and taken together they add up to something very satisfying. Whitehead nails the geography and feel of this particular time, place and cultural/socio-economic milieu. And yet it's all universal in its appeal. He writes like a dream, whether critiquing the town's few radio stations; describing Benji's doctor father's afternoon alcohol regime (all done through sounds); recounting the pecking order of his friends and how they will, in a few years, change; or taking you through the frozen foods section of the grocery aisle.

There's something elegiac about the book, especially in the stunning final pages, set during the annual Labor Day picnic and campfire. It's here that Whitehead's writing reaches its greatest heights of lyricism, insight and profundity.

There are passages that are so brilliant and funny and just beautifully constructed that they demand to be read aloud. Do it. And try to read the book in the summer. You'll thank me afterwards.

** I've since read many more books by Whitehead, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning novels The Underground Railroad (a clear 5 star book) and The Nickel Boys