Sag Harbor

It's 1985. Benji, the son of a lawyer and a doctor, is one of the only black kids at an elite prep school in Manhattan. He spends much of the year going to roller disco bar mitzvahs and trying desperately to find a social group that will accept him. But every summer, Benji and his brother Reggie escape to Sag Harbor on Long Island, where a small community of African-American professionals have built a world of their own. Except Benji is just as confused about this all-black refuge as he is about the white world he negotiates during the school year. He's one step behind on every new dance, and his attempts to meet a girl are undermined by his own awkwardness, not to mention his braces and his father-cut Afro. Sag Harbor is a warm and funny novel about the perpetual mortification of teenage existence from one of the most acclaimed writers in the English language.