Whitehead pushes his love of pop culture into hyper-drive. And Whitehead crafts a wonderful set piece describing Benji's days at Jonni Waffle Ice Cream, where he is shrouded in 'waffle musk' and a dirty T-shirt that's 'soiled, covered with batter and befudged from a sundae mishap.'

The book's leisurely eight chapters mostly concern Benji's first kiss, the removal of braces, BB gun battles, slinging insults (largely unprintable 'grammatical acrobatics') with his friends, and working his first summer job. But Sag Harbor is a coming-of-age novel whose plot side-steps life-changing events writ large. Benji's a Converse-wearing, Smiths-loving, Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd whose favorite Star Wars character is the hapless bounty hunter Greedo (rather than the double-crossing Lando Calrissian). The year is 1985 and 15-year-old Benji Cooper, one of the only black students at his elite Manhattan private school, leaves the city to spend three largely unsupervised months living with his younger brother Reggie in an enclave of Long Island's Sag Harbor, the summer home to many African American urban professionals. But maybe, just maybe, this summer might be one for the ages.Īmazon Best of the Month, May 2009: Like his fellow New Yorker Jonathan Lethem, Colson Whitehead weaves gracefully through genres with each of his books, but Sag Harbor, billed as his 'autobiographical fourth novel,' seems positioned to be his breakout book-which is a funny thing for a writer who has already received so many major literary awards, including a MacArthur 'Genius' grant and being short-listed for the Pulitzer. Benji will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through and state-of-the-art profanity to master. The summer of ?85 won?t be without its usual trials and tribulations, of course. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of African American professionals have built a world of their own. (From the award-winning author of John Henry Days and The Intuitionist: a tender, hilarious, and supremely original novel about coming-of-age in the 80s.īenji Cooper is one of the few black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan.

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead