Starred review from October 16, 2017
From the chief blogger of Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign comes a provocative debut that wrestles with matters of race, white privilege, and institutional prejudice head-on. The subtly humorous, surprisingly touching coming-of-age narrative is told from the perspective of Dave, one of the only white students at King, a predominantly black and Latino public middle school in Boston. At the start of sixth grade in 1992, he befriends Marlon, a smart black student from the nearby housing projects with a passion for the Celtics and a gorgeous singing voice. The pals wade through typical middle school drama together—flirting with “shorties,” getting bullied by tougher classmates, handling academic stress. Their friendship survives most of the upheaval, until competition over a girl and Dave’s ease at getting ahead get in the way. The significance of the boys’ backgrounds is obvious—Dave might be an outlier at school, but he and his Harvard-educated hippie parents are more set up in life than most in his gentrifying neighborhood. Where Graham-Felsen shines is in his depiction of the pressures put on Marlon to rise above his circumstances and to cope with his mother’s mental illness. The novel is also a memorable and moving portrayal of a complicated but deep friendship that just might survive the weight placed on it.
October 15, 2017
A white boy in a majority-black Boston middle school gets an education on race and friendship. This debut novel is set in 1992 and narrated by David Greenfeld, aka Green, the son of middle-class parents who send him to a public middle school in the name of progressive politics. "They 'believe in public schools, ' even when they're mad ghetto," he explains early, deploying the hip-hop slang that distinguishes this otherwise fairly conventional coming-of-age story. Bullying? Check: his whiteness makes him a target, and he's quickly stripped of the expensive, gaudy outfit he buys to earn some street bona fides. Cross-cultural friendship? Check: Green bonds with Marlon "Mar" Wellings, a black classmate from the nearby projects, over Celtics basketball and a mutual interest in passing the entrance exam to Boston Latin high school. Budding self-awareness? Check: Green's growing awareness of Marlon's background is matched by his own enlightenment in matters both primal (sex) and intellectual (his Jewish background). Graham-Felsen, who has a similar background to Green's, writes sensitively about the multiple ways racism manifests in this milieu: Green and Mar's snow-shoveling hustle only succeeds when Mar isn't visible to white clients, and Green is oblivious to how Marlon is treated as suspect at a Harvard alumni gathering. Throughout, Celtics star Larry Bird serves as Green's spirit animal and symbol for the narrative where whiteness represents difference, and Graham-Felsen avoids the biggest danger by making sure Green's language never feels forced. Green's delivery is often witty ("What do white girls like to talk about? The Gap? Horses?"). But the author's focus on Green's quotidian concerns about school and girls limits attention on Marlon, who has the more dramatic story, and other threads concerning religion, Green's quirky brother, and his family's connection to the Holocaust feel extraneous and unfinished. A well-turned if familiar race-themed bildungsroman.
COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from October 1, 2017
The year is 1992, the place is Boston, and 12-year-old Dave Greenfeld ( Green ) is one of only two white boys in his sixth-grade class at Martin Luther King Middle School. It's not easy being Green when you're an outsider, an easy target for verbal (and the threat of physical) abuse. Essentially abandoned by the other white boy, once his friend, Dave is left alone until he meets Marlon, who is black, and the two strike up a tentative friendship that soon blossoms. Dave poignantly thinks that Marlon isn't just his best friend; he's his first. Up until now I had no idea just how lonely I'd been. Graham-Felsen's fine first novel is clearly about race relations at a specific time in American history, and, perhaps accordingly, the two boys' interracial friendship is not always an easy one: Dave is diffident to a fault and has a habit of betraying his friend. Worse is the specter of what Dave calls the Forcei.e., racial prejudice. Will it eventually shatter the two boys' friendship? Dave tells his story in his own idiosyncratic, vaguely streetwise voice, with hip-hop overtones that perfectly capture the mood and tone of the story. He and Marlon are wonderful characters, fully realized and multidimensional, and Graham-Felsen has done a superb job of creating their environment. Voice, mood, tone, character, and setting all contribute to the making of a memorable first novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)
September 1, 2017
Having honed his language skills as chief blogger for Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, Graham-Felsen turns in a 1992 Boston-set story starring a boy nicknamed Green who's that rare white student at Martin Luther King Middle School. He becomes friends with Marlon, a needy, nerdy kid from the projects, and they're almost able to resist their school's terrible social pressures.
Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.