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Sag Harbor: A Novel
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Sag Harbor: A Novel
Unavailable
Sag Harbor: A Novel
Audiobook11 hours

Sag Harbor: A Novel

Written by Colson Whitehead

Narrated by Mirron Willis

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

The warm, funny, and supremely original new novel from one of the most acclaimed writers in America

The year is 1985. Benji Cooper is one of the only black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends his falls and winters going to roller-disco bar mitzvahs, playing too much Dungeons and Dragons, and trying to catch glimpses of nudity on late-night cable TV. After a tragic mishap on his first day of high school-when Benji reveals his deep enthusiasm for the horror movie magazine Fangoria-his social doom is sealed for the next four years.
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. Because their parents come out only on weekends, he and his friends are left to their own devices for three glorious months. And although he's just as confused about this all-black refuge as he is about the white world he negotiates the rest of the year, he thinks that maybe this summer things will be different. If all goes according to plan, that is.
There will be trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through, and state-of-the-art profanity to master. He 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 of '85, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, with a little luck, things will turn out differently this summer.
In this deeply affectionate and fiercely funny coming-of-age novel, Whitehead-using the perpetual mortification of teenage existence and the desperate quest for reinvention-lithely probes the elusive nature of identity, both personal and communal.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 28, 2009
ISBN9780739381915
Unavailable
Sag Harbor: A Novel
Author

Colson Whitehead

Colson Whitehead was born in New York City in 1969 and graduated from Harvard College in 1991. He has written four novels, including the Pulitzer-Prize-nominated ‘John Henry Days.’ He has written for, amongst others, The New York Times, Salon and The Village Voice.

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Reviews for Sag Harbor

Rating: 3.6035087298245614 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really wanted to like this book more than I did. While the scenes of summer are well written the book felt sooooo long. That's because there is no real plot, nothing to move the novel along. It felt like a slow, long summer hanging around with friends, not much happens, everyone grows up and that's about it.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This story did not suit my taste. I think that's because I'm a non-American and I'm not familiar with the long summer breaks as a kid and teenager. That's why I did not know how to deal with these memories. But what I have to credit Whitehead is his language. He has a clever way of describing something, be it processes, things or feelings.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It is 1985, and Benji Cooper is fifteen. Every summer, the Cooper family flees Manhattan for the Hamptons. They are part of a small community of African American professionals, who vacation on the island. This endearing coming of age novel documents one summer, as Benji and his friends, enjoy dances, BB-Gun fights, checking out girls and working their various fast-food jobs. I am glad I read this in the dead of winter, because Whitehead evokes such a warm, sunny tone to the narrative, along with a hefty dose of humor. He is a good writer, a deft wordsmith, but he can get excessively wordy and off track, bogging the story down, in places.It makes an interesting contrast to Black Swan Green, which I read recently, it is another coming of age novel, set in working-class England, during the same time-period, but that one was relentlessly bleak, but also leaner and more focused.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Colson Whitehead jokingly called this book his "autobiographical first novel." The protagonist is Benji Cooper, who spends summers in the African American community of Sag Harbor in the Hamptons. He attends an elite private school and he is nerdy. As a young teenager in 1985, Benji resolves to reinvent himself as cooler and more popular. He is oddly adrift during this summer; his unhappy parents only come out on weekends; his older sister doesn't come out at all anymore; his younger brother Reggie, once very close to him, is branching out on his own. My book club was pretty much unanimous in hating this book; I blame myself for not preparing them for the lack of a cohesive plot. I really enjoyed Whitehead's language, his vivid imagery, metaphors and sly humor. I also enjoy the musical and other pop-culture allusions. But I came away feeling that the work overall was very slight. I'd like to read one of Whitehead's other books that has a tighter structure.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is easily the best audio book I have listened to this year. Mirren Willis was born to this role, his subtle wry tone perfectly matched to the material. I laughed out loud at least a dozen times.I feel this novel has been misunderstood by the critics. Whitehead is a novelist with too much integrity to churn out a rote coming of age novel. Too many historical novels are about current times dressed in retro fashion. This is a novel that is unflinchingly loyal to the lived past that gave it life. It is a very rare thing to witness nowadays.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really loved this book. Whitehead is smart, witty, wry and observant.
    Slightly disappointed with the ending that just sort of dribbled off...
    But the rest of the book was tight!
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A vivid, very sharply observed, drily hilarious, emotionally resonant chronicle of a NYC black teen’s 15th summer in the African-American summer community of Sag Harbor, Long Island. Whitehead as usual writes beautiful and accessible prose, with arresting images. Here he (seemingly, I don’t know his bio) also draws on autobiographical experience to layer so many small observations and details of the time that the experience is engrossing and cinematic, a window into the whole community and its culture. The reading is great too, so sympathetic to the rhythm and humor and sensibility of the author, creating a dramatic experience beyond reading the book. So, so enjoyable, so much fun, so wise and moving.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Colson Whitehead became famous and twice Pulitzered for his historical fiction (The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys), but he has written in many different genres including speculative fiction (The Intuitionist) and even a dystopian zombie novel (Zone One). Sag Harbor falls squarely into the coming-of-age category, as a first-person narrative told by 15-year-old Benji Cooper, but with Whitehead’s excellent writing and thoughtful reflections, it often feels like a lot more. Benji’s family leaves New York every year to summer in the small African American enclave of Sag Harbor, and the story follows Benji through the summer of 1985. There’s not a lot of plot, but plenty of 1980s nostalgia, social commentary, and awkwardly funny teen moments to keep the pages turning.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is Whitehead’s coming of age novel of appending summers at his family’s vacation home in Sag Harbor on Long Island – a traditional upper middle class black resort community. All the elements are here – the first jobs at tourist attractions, meeting girls, and trying to pass s older in order to get into music venues – only all of these with Whitehead are tinged with race that never seems to go away.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Dandelion Wine" set in the 1980s and therefore a novel created whole cloth for someone like me. Well done, Mr. Whitehead! And thank you.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Sag Harbor is essentially a coming-of-age type story that focuses on 15-year-old Ben during a summer in the 1980s in which he and his brother stay out at their family's beach house with their parents only coming out during the weekends. However, it's clearly being narrated by an older Ben, and he oftentimes dips back into memories of other times.This is one of those books where nothing really happens of great significance and it's more about character development. There's a lot of deep themes about identity, race, family, etc. underneath the seemingly mundane exterior of a bunch of boys hanging out all summer doing a whole lot of nothing. Whitehead is clearly an excellent writer, and I look forward to reading other books by him. My only real complaint is that while the male characters are well developed (especially Ben of course), the female characters are just there as objects for the boys. For the audiophile, Mirron Willis was a great narrator for this book.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In Sag Harbor, author Colson Whitehead revisits 1985 in the beach community where his family summered from New York City every year. The adult narrator, Benji, looks back on his teen years with about fifty percent nostalgia and fifty percent, "What were we thinking?!"I loved the narrative voice, which frequently made me laugh. Loved the way the book was structured, starting out as surface-level as a sit-com and then deepening, almost as if the narrator waited to get to know the reader a bit before revealing his family's pock marks.Occasionally, the prose veers off onto a tangent so long that it threatens never to return. I've been known to stop reading highly esteemed writers (cough John Irving cough, cough) for this reason alone, but Whitehead pulls it off. (More on Worducopia)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A view to history is not what Whitehead appears to be aiming for with this book. Instead, this is a story of young men being, well, young men. Any 30-years-later resonance that comes with reading the book today, well, that's because of today. It's good to know that the struggles of today's teens feel like the struggles of teens back then - and it's not-so-good to know that the broader struggles of society are still pretty much the same. But if things do stay the same, that means that summers will always be a refuge for kids and a time to worry about nothing other than figuring themselves out. And when authors like Whitehead tell those stories, well, I can think of no greater way to spend a hot summer weekend than kicking back and cracking the covers.

    More TK on Friday at RB:
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I love Whitehead's work as much as the next person--even the underrated Apex Hides the Hurt--but I was disappointed in Sag Harbor. It reminded me of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green--another wan coming-of-age story by an insanely talented writer who sure has better, more innovative books to write than this one. It's like listening to a virtuoso pianist play Chopsticks. Sure, it's the best version of Chopsticks you've ever heard in your life, but why would someone play Chopsticks when he can play Chopin? Sag Harbor is witty and well-written and there were a couple of moments that made me laugh out loud--but I know Whitehead has more to say than he says in this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When you're finished laughing, you look up to discover that Whitehead took you through a lot of territory and was further below the surface than you thought.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is one of those strange books where everything about it is great - story, writing, characterization, setting - and yet somehow it took me forever to get through; somehow I could never get to that point where I had to know what happened next. The book is more a series of very closely connected short stories than a proper novel, which may go a little ways to explaining this lack of urgency. I love Whitehead's writing, though - nearly every sentence is one I wish I'd written, and his narrator, Benji, is one of my people - nerdy, introverted, endlessly dying of shame, endlessly at the heart of an ordinary thing gone utterly and irrevocably pear-shaped - and is an excellent guide to the world of adolescence. Benji's at the center of a world that's falling apart, that point in everyone's life where the way things are starts to give way to the ever-increasing pace of change that is adult life, and Whitehead nails that unease, that sense of crumbling and loss. Nearly every sentence is one I wish I could have written myself.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The year is 1985 and Benji is 15 years old. He is spending the summer with his family in the Sag Harbor area of Long Island. Along with his younger brother Reggie, he has the house to himself during the week while his parents are working in the city. By turns hilarious and poignant, this coming of age story will appeal to anyone who remembers growing up in the mid ‘80s.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really enjoyed this. This window into the lives of upper class black kids isn't something one sees a lot of in literature, and Whitehead handles it with a light, deft touch. The strongest (and funniest, most charming) parts of the book are when the narrator illustrates how black kids struggle to project a cohesive identity in the face of conflicting messages from parents and peers and pop culture and society; the stuff where the kids are all trying to figure out the new, hip, "black" handshakes and totally failing is one of the most endearing sequences. The struggles here may not be weighty on the level of slavery or civil rights, but they are struggles nonetheless. Especially toward the beginning, the book fumbles a little to strike the right tone. The author clearly wants to make a sharp distinction between the slangy voices of his characters and the lyrical, erudite voice of the narrator. When it works, it works well, but sometimes the narrative voice strains a little too hard to impress.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is a wonderfully written coming of age novel. The main character is Benji, a 15 year old upper middle class black kid. He and his younger brother Reggie are spending the summer mostly unsupervised at their parents beach house in Sag Harbor.The author does a very good job in evoking the time period of 1985. For me, the book was a contrast of the familiar and foreign-- I remember new coke and the fashions, but beach houses and the art of an afro were new to me. I understand family conflict but not the relationships between teen boys.At the beginning of the book, we are introduced to the brothers as being virtual twins, but by the time we come to the summer in question, they have drifted apart, even choosing to attend different schools. We get a look at how this relationship changes, and what being brothers really means to them. The rest of the family is largely kept in the background. We get glimpses of the older sister, and of the relationship between the mother and father. These are not smooth relationships, but we really only see them in the impact on Benji and Reggie, such as when they accidentally find a list their mother made, outlining their father's faults (and there are some big ones on the list).We also see the challenges within their group of peers in Sag Harbor. Some trick of demographics caused there to be virtually no girls within their age group. Watching the interactions between these boys on the edge of being men was interesting. Each of them has his own journey that summer, but they are interwoven as well.The story was narrated by Benji as an adult, looking back on his childhood. Most of the time, the narration is unobtrusive, which made the occasional glimpses we got of the grown Ben more powerful. We read about the friends' mostly innocent adventures with BB guns that summer, then Ben mentions that later encounters with guns were more serious, and talks of the loss of friends. One thing that hasn't come through in this review is that the book is funny, really funny. Whitehead has a light touch which keeps the more serious issues from overwhelming his entertaining look at day to day life. The descriptions of Benji's job at the ice cream parlor and details about the grammatical patterns of their cursing are just a few of the parts that had me laughing while reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Benji lives for the majority of his year in New York with his brother Reggie, sister Elena, parents who are a podiatrist and lawyer. Benji doesn't feel like he quite fits in to his private school, he is one of the only black children there. Every summer Benji and his family spend 3 months at the beach house in Sag Harbor on Long Island a long standing holiday enclave for black families. The year is 1985 and we join Benji on his summer trip to Sag Harbor aged 15. We follow Benji around with his gang of friends, to his work at the ice cream parlor, when he is trying to pacify his father by eating barbecue chicken and when he breaks into his grandparents' holiday home. Aside from this nothing much else happens, but Sag Harbour is a funny and sweet take on a coming of age tale. Three stars.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    You know the Seinfeld parody of the J. Peterman catalog? Those travelogues of inanimate objects obsessively detailed to the point of hilarity? That's kind of what this book is like: an absurd, obsessively detailed, romaticized travelogue of human folly. And I honestly mean that in a good way. The man can write the hell out of a sentence, and though he is using the rose-colored glasses we often use to view our pasts, you can tell by the prosaic subjects he chooses--New Coke, Swanson TV dinners, the grammar of teenage insults--that the tint isn't hiding any flaws exactly, they're just putting a slight haze over the proceedings. The juxtaposition of the elaborate detail and the mundane subjects generally results in both insight and hilarity.A standout passage describing holding hands for the first time with a girl at a roller rink:"We were out there forever. How does one measure infinity in a roller rink? You can test the universe by asking questions--how many mirrored tiles on disco balls shooting how many pure white streaks across the walls and floors, how many ball bearings clacking into each other like agitated molecules in how many polyurethane wheels, how many inkblot colonies of bacteria blooming unchecked in the toe-ward gloom of how many rented skates. But let's say this notion of chintzy roller-rink infinity is best expressed by the number two. Two people, two hands, and two songs, in this case, 'Big Shot' and 'Bette Davis Eyes.'"My complaint about this book is that I suspect that it is the victim of the post-James Frey world of publishing. Everyone's too paranoid to publish a memoir these days that uses any sort of creative license, and so this got published as a novel. As a novel, it's a 4-star book. As a memoir, it would have been 5 stars. There are different rules, different plotting techniques required of a novel, and this just doesn't come up to meet those expectations. As a series of remembrances, a soliloquy on growing up and finding yourself when you don't fit into the pre-defined rules of the world forced on you, this book excels. But there is no real plot or story arc, no strong enough tension pulling this together as a novel. Obviously I don't know how much of this self-described autobiographical novel was fictionalized, but I have a pretty strong feeling that not much would need to be changed to call it a memoir and perhaps throw a disclaimer about faulty memory and protecting identities at the front of the book. What best summarizes this book is a passage in which the narrator describes his reaction to his aunt selling the house that he spent summers in as a child: "I was appalled, but you know me. I was nostalgic for everything big and small. Nostalgic for what never happened and nostalgic about what will be, looking forward to looking back on a time when things got easier."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great use of language. I had read John Henry's Days but found this book much more engaging. His chapter about the house and the connection to music was great. I read a couple of negative reviews but these seemed to be people that just didn't get it or really shouldn't be reading books like this. Although he goes off on tangents, if you stick with it you will be rewarded. I am glad I gave Whitehead another chance and will go back and read his other work
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Whitehead writes with an intelligent, funny, insightful way about family summers on the east end of Long Island. It's the 1980's and Benji and his friends spend their time carousing, crusing, creating waffle cones and discovering what's cool. Like a grown-up "The Watsons Go To Birmingham" these coming-of-age vignettes detail a close-knit society with a sharp focus.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Love! I admit it, I'm a sucker for coming-of-age stories written by people who are about my age, because I delight in being able to sync up my own touchstones with those mentioned in the book. That's like the height of vanity, right? New Coke! Tower Records! Anyway, this is, from what I understand, a novel drawing significantly upon autobiography, and recounts the summer of a 15 year old teen spent in a middle-class vacation enclave on Long Island in 1985. It has the usual summer elements: beach town, summer job, childhood friends, grilling and bonfires and all the things that inspire and annoy people when they are 15. Grade: ARecommended: It's really funny, too. Absolutely recommended for anyone who grew up with a summer town.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This “autobiographical fourth novel” is the story of 15-year-old Benji Cooper’s three, largely unsupervised, months living with his younger brother in an all-black enclave of Long Island’s Sag Harbor. Benji is a classic 80s nerd, down to his love for Dungeons & Dragons and (the original) Star Wars.Benji’s summer adventures include his first kiss, BB gun battles, crafting the most grammatically correct insults with his friends, and his first summer job at Jonni Waffle Ice Cream. Pop culture references (from “The Cosby Show” and “Mad Max” reruns on Cinemax, to the horror known as New Coke) and a boom-box full of music flow like warm breezes through the book, perfectly capturing the period. It also helps that Benji has a brother named Reggie. I always like books with characters with whom I share a name!Don’t look for a lot of plot or attempt to mine for deeper meaning in all this. Dark shadows do appear around the edges of Sag Harbor, but for the most part this book is entertainment, a fine writer taking us on vacation with him for a stroll down memory’s boardwalk. Grab something cold, kick back on your favorite beach towel, and enjoy.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A coming of age tale spans the early to late teen-hood young man experiences as found in the summer wonderland of Sag Harbor, NY. Whitehead explores the values and differences of middle class African-American culture in the mid 80's (although the time-frame is set marginally before the rise of the phrase African-American). In Sag, Whitehead's auto-biographical style offers a palpable sense of the teen-gangly, boy angst (back before their was angst as popularized by the scrubby clean waifs of the mid to late 90s.) In Sag, the prose reveals experiences and memories that can easily transcends race but are rooted in the experience of the same. The descriptions are real and identifiable even to those of us who don't share the racial identity so important to the setting. The shared sense of gender, class identity, and power struggles from this 2009 novel are retold fresh but familiar, crisp as the first summer nights. No chapter captures this more than the "Heyday of Dag," a musing on the word "dag" and the playful and insulting banter aimed squarely at and by teenage boys in search of friendship and quarry.Similar to one of Whitehead's earlier and notable works, _The Intuitionist_, readers are treated to one of fictions' greatest writers on class in America, especially the experienced of middle-class America.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I'm sorry I can't finish this book - advance copy or not. I read half of it and feel as if I'm simply wasting my time now, since I have no interest in it. The language made me uncomfortable, and I couldn't identify with any of the characters. I tried, because I like the author's style, but at this point it's simply a waste of my time - and I absolutely *hate* not finishing a book.However, I'm moving on to a book I can truly enjoy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A Slightly Less Humourous SuperbadThere is a lot of hype surrounding "Sag Harbor" and its author Colson Whitehead. Admittedly, this is the first book of Whitehead's that I've read, but "Sag Harbor" definitely doesn't live up to the pub its been getting.Described as a novel, but should be more accurately categorized as a series of semi-autobiographical vignettes -- a coming of age kind of a story about a middle-class African American boy growing up in the 80s who spends his summers at the Sag. Most of it is typical growing-up stuff, awkward encounters with girls, trying to get into nightclubs, scamming beer off of everyone and anyone. It is a Superbad kind of a story, but not quite as amusing.The African American angle is superficially explored, but I don't think that kind of angle would work here anyways. The family at the center of the stories are middle-class, a real-life Cosby Show family. Identity is a primary theme, as it usually is in these kind of coming of age stories.Overall, "Sag Harbor" is a decent read if somewhat over-hyped. It is obvious that the stories are loosely based on his own life which partially explains how Whitehead is successful in writing with such lucidity.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Do you have that special place from your childhood? The one that will always be your first love? For Colson Whitehead, in his "autobiographical" novel Sag Harbor, this place is his family's beach house on Long Island.Sag Harbor covers the teenage summers of Benji ("Call me Ben") as he navigates those painful years of both discovering and inventing who you are, where a single failure can allow others to define who you are without your permission. In the book, Whitehead creates a sympathetic character who is real, who we can associate with, who we can project ourselves onto. And that is his success. By the end of the book, we are thinking not of Sag Harbor but of our own childhood, of our own "beach house" where we escaped our lives and could be who we wanted to be, but ended up being even more of ourselves.Structurally, Sag Harbor is not driven by plot. Although it follows the events of a summer, this is more a device for us to learn about Benji, for Whitehead to show the arc of self-discovery through the events. This can - at times - slow down the novel. But the author's eloquently sparse style keeps it from becoming a burden. He has gathered anecdotes and arranged them in an order that lets us see the progression without showing us the end.A good book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The back cover copy of my ARC (Advance Reading Copy) says that Colson Whitehead is "one of the most acclaimed writers in America." This could indeed be true but I had never heard of Whitehead before although in browsing his previous books, I do recognize one of the titles. Does this mean I'm completely out of the loop or is it more indicative that his books are not generally books that I pick up on a whim. If the latter, after reading this one, I can say that they still probably won't be on my "must acquire list." This particular book, billed as his Autobiographical Fourth Novel, intrigued me when I read the plot synopsis distilled down to teaser form but it never grabbed me the way I had hoped.This is a classic coming of age novel set in Sag Harbor, the African-American neighbor to the Hamptons. Benji Cooper and his brother Reggie are in their teens during the summer of 1985, the summer that their parents allow them to be out at their summer place without any adult supervision during the week. Benji and Reggie have always been a unit but this momentous summer sees them become two very different and separate people even while they still share the same peer age group (they aren't twins but close) and friends. The book follows Benji, the more cautious and thoughtful brother as he tries to be the voice of reason (when the boys cook up schemes like shooting at each other with pump BB guns), gets a job (which forever kills his desire for ice cream), looks on as his friends land two of the only girls around, and just generally goes about being a kid with one year of his exclusive, majority white prep-school high school behind him.Benji is a good narrator to introduce the unique entity that is Sag Harbor because, in a sense, he is an outsider in the all-black community despite his ethnicity, trying hard to negotiate the things he thinks others just instinctively know. Throughout the summer, he comes to understand that everyone is at sea as he is, especially in the foreign country that is teenage-dom. He is mocked for some of his preferences: stealing Cokes from a party because he is trying to fend off having to drink New Coke, leaving the radio on the lite FM channel and other such social faux pas. And he must navigate the tensions swirling in his own family. With his new and not always entirely welcome severing from being "Benji 'n Reggie" and his parents barely seeming to tolerate each other, Benji clings to the known in this summer community where he's spent every summer of his life. There are also a few scenes with Benji at his school or interacting with his school friends but they are a much smaller portion of the book than his Sag Harbor time and they are only tangentially connected as the two worlds never meet. Spanning just the one summer, the book doesn't really have a grand climax, more a series of smaller ones, ending with the end of summer and everyone leaving to resume their lives in the city.Since my family has a summer place that has been in the family forever, a place that defines us as much as any other place on earth, I was looking forward to reading this, thinking there would be some similarities. And there were a few. But they were fewer than expected. Did I not really relate to Benji because he is male and African-American and I am neither? I don't know. I suspect that we actually have more in common than not (cautious, clinging to the expected and to tradition) but for some reason, I just didn't connect with his character. It took me a very long time to be engaged enough with the book to resist putting it down at every opportunity. The writing was good and the premise should have captured me but somehow, Sag Harbor and I just missed each other. I'm sure others will have better luck but I'm just lukewarm about it.