Sag Harbor

Starred review from February 23, 2009
In what Whitehead describes as his “Autobiographical Fourth Novel” (as opposed to the more usual autobiographical first novel), the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist John Henry Days
explores the in-between space of adolescence through one boy's summer in a predominantly black Long Island neighborhood. Benji and Reggie, brothers so closely knit that many mistake them for twins, have been coming out to Sag Harbor for as long as they can remember. For Benji, each three-month stay at Sag is a chance to catch up with friends he doesn't see the rest of the year, and to escape the social awkwardness that comes with a bad afro, reading Fangoria
, and being the rare African-American student at an exclusive Manhattan prep school. As he and Reggie develop separate identities and confront new factors like girls, part-time jobs and car-ownership, Benji struggles to adapt to circumstances that could see him joining the ranks of “Those Who Don't Come Out Anymore.” Benji's funny and touching story progresses leisurely toward Labor Day, but his reflections on what's gone before provide a roadmap to what comes later, resolving social conflicts that, at least this year, have yet to explode.

March 1, 2009
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.

Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he'll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family's summer retreat of New York's Sag Harbor."According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses," writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There's an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist's eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.

Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead's earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from March 15, 2009
Fifteen-year-old Benji has spent every summer since he can remember in Sag Harbor, NY. The rest of the year, he's a black preppie from Manhattan, with a doctor father and a lawyer mother and a younger brother, Reggie. It is 1985, and Reggie gets a job at Burger King, leaving Benji (who would prefer to be called Ben) to hang with his summer friends (the term "posse" wasn't invented yet), other black prep school refugees. Not a lot happens during those three months. Or does everything happen, all that matters to an insecure, nerdy teen just beginning to recognize the man he might become? Scooping ice cream at Jonni Waffle, riding to the "white beach" with the one guy who's got a car, trying to crash a Lisa Lisa concert at the hip club, and kissing a girl and copping a feel are significant events in a life that encompasses generations of folks who called Sag Harbor home. Wonderful, evocative writing, as always, from Whitehead ("Apex Hides the Hurt"); male readers especially will relate. Highly recommended. [Prepub Alert, "LJ" 12/08.]Bette-Lee Fox, "Library Journal"

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2009
MacArthur fellow Whitehead follows three inventive, satirical, and reverberating novels with a classic entering-manhood tale framed within the summer of 1985. Benji, 15, skinny, nerdy, well-meaning, and wry, reports on life in a legendary African American enclave in Sag Harbor, Long Island. He and hisbrother, the sons of a doctor and a lawyer, attend private school in Manhattan and spend each summer here with a circle of friends, this year moving on from bicycles to cars, arcade games tooglinggirls. Benji muses over the fact that he and his friends, black boys with beach houses, define paradox, and frets over myriad anxieties, including his inability to keep up with the new handshakes. Whiteheads ardor for pop culture launches exuberantly caustic ruminations on music, fashion, and TV, while he goes overboard describing Benjis ice-cream-shop job. Benjis stipulations of what is cool and uncool create a moral equation, while the buzz of summer delights conceals the pain of racism and class bias, which lurk like jagged rocks beneath the sun-dazzled sea. Yet, just as Benji cant swim, Whitehead sticks to the frothy shoreline and avoids the deep. Caution lowers the resonance of this masterfully told tale, but ups the pleasure, making for an unusually generous, wisely funny novel about good kids and a societys muddled attempt to come of age.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)