Customer Reviews

Sag Harbor: A Novel

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I picked up Whitehead's first book (The Intuitionist) when it came out about a decade ago, mainly because I thought the author's name was interesting. Little did I know I'd stumbled across one of the best debut novels I've ever read. Next was the flawed but enjoyable John Henry Days, followed by the relatively light but still enjoyable Apex Hides the Hurt. Now, with his fourth novel, Whitehead finally turns autobiographical, and while his prose is as dexterous as ever, the book never really comes together.

Set in 1985, the story follows 15-year-old Benji over the course of a summer in Sag Harbor. He's a perennial outsider, a black kid at a Mahattan prep school, whose social scene revolves around Bar Mitzvahs, D&D sessions, horror movies, and punk and post-punk music. However, during the summers, the family heads to the family house at Sag Harbor where he's in the midst of a cadre of black friends whom he never sees during the school year. With that context, it should come as no surprise that the book shares the same dominant theme as Whitehead's three other novels -- race and identity.

However, unlike those books, there's almost no story to speak of. The reader merely tags along with Benji as he whiles away the summer, doing typical stupid teenage boy stuff, trying to fit in and trying to manage the transition from kid to adult. While this is a pretty good representation of teen angst, it's not that compelling. Sure, the prose is stylish, there are interesting characters, funny scenes, and some deep themes, but without a story to hang these on, the book has a very listless feel. I'm the same age as Benji, and share many of Benji's interests, so I was able to appreciate all the cultural references and whatnot -- but that's not enough. The book never builds to anything -- like the end of summer it just kind of fades away.

. . .Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated." Garrison Keilor

Like Benji, the protagonist of Colson Whitehead's "Sag Harbor", I grew up in New York City. The city was my playground. My friends and I wandered the streets, went from playground to playground to play basketball, stickball, or roller hockey. We'd take the subway to Coney Island and spend days on the beach, on the boardwalk and on the amusement park rides. When we were feeling particularly frisky we'd head over to Riis Park at Far Rockaway and try to get a gander at the nude sunbathers. We'd rarely see our parents between sunrise and sunset. I felt in my element. This was my world. Then, when I hit 13 I was sent away to a boarding school. Right when I hit adolescence I was lifted up out of one world and placed by my parents in a new, ostensibly better world. The people I met were alien to me and the disaffection I felt at not quite fitting in was palpable. I spent 9 months longing to return to my universe but when I did I found that being in my old, more comfortable world, did not relive me of the unfettered angst of being a teenager or make me comfortable in a new world where girls, music, Colt 45 Malt liquor and the improbable dream of `becoming a man' still made each day one filled with a mixture of unease and anticipation.

In a very real way this is the same world Benji inhabits. Benji spends 9 months of the year at a Manhattan prep school, a world unlike the middle class world he grew up in. Benji's disaffection may have played out along racial lines while mine was a divide of socio-economic class but the feelings Whitehead evinces in Benji seem to share a lot of the same DNA as my own. "Sag Harbor" is set in that 3-month summer gap after his return from prep school. Set in 1985 Sag Harbor is a local resort community created by and for middle class African-American families. Benji, 15, and his younger brother Reggie have the house to themselves during the week while their parents stay in the city to work. Their buddies lead similar partially adult-free lives. It is a gentle commingling of Lord of the Flies and Summer of 42.

Sag Harbor is well-written and enjoyable. It evokes a time and place in the lives of teen boys. As some reviewers have noted there isn't what you would call a plot-driven narrative. There isn't a series of events leading to a dramatic climax. Like Seinfeld the book is about nothing but in the hands of Whitehead it is a charming read. The life I lived in my summer time was typically about nothing. What are we going to do today? What are we going to get up to? Can we find an older brother to get us some beer? Doesn't so-and-so look hot? Laughing at jokes we didn't quite understand and trying our best, but not successfully, to stay out of trouble, were the order of the day. The book may be about nothing but the writing makes it pleasurable. Benji's observations about himself and the world around him seem spot-on to me. As the summer progresses we see the best-laid plans sometimes work and sometimes fail. Whitehead is a fine writer and managed to keep me laughing, chuckling or sighing at Benji's `summer of `85'.

Sag Harbor was a very enjoyable book to read. It brought back semi-sweet memories of days gone bye. If you are looking for a book with a roller coaster ride of highs and lows Sag Harbor is not for you. However, if you are looking for a very well-written piece that evokes memories of a time in your life when the fog of adolescence weighed heavily on each day's activities, then I think you will enjoy Sag Harbor.

L. Fleisig

This is a wonderfully written coming of age story. The prose is thought-provoking, humorous, and engrossing. Colson Whitehead uses humor to effectively bring important issues to the reader's consciousness. He brings the reader back to the 1980's and all the quirky happenings of that time; New Coke - need I say more. We also get a view into the issues that race and class present for teenagers just trying to learn how to fit in to such a complicated world. Also important is the realization and subsequent respect of our history and what generations before us went through and accomplished so that we may live as we do today. It is coming to terms with/recognizing that things we take for granted now were fought for and a price was paid by those who fought for them. The book starts out somewhat light-heartedly and then slowly weaves in the darkness that comes with family dysfunction and alcoholism. It is a well-rounded, funny, and sometimes heart-breaking story of growing up in a world full of choices and consequences.

the summer they were 14 and 15, not your average black teenagers, as young boys their school clothes were blazers and corduroy jackets from brook brothers young mens department. later they attended a prep school and bar mitzvahs. after memorial day they were out of manhattan and at the family beach house in the hamptons, sag harbor. they were summer people, black summer people. this isn't new fictional territory. dorothy west set her fiction in the island upper middle class black enclave of oak bluffs, martha's vineyard, and in the novel, love, toni morrison wrote of a black resort hotel on the east coast.

the year 1985, the narrator, ben cooper, looks back. their older sister was in college, and once in college you no longer summered on the beach, not until you have children of your own, benji and his younger brother, reggie, were alone at the beach house, until their parents arrived on the weekends. teenage boys, gangling limbs and braces on teeth, with summer jobs, when not working they filled time watching tv and with their black friends playing video games, shooting bb guns, fighting, finding ways to get beer, on the lookout for girls, and scheming to get into concerts.

as the story stretches on you want to keep reading the often told story of growing up familiar to most of us, compelled by the storytelling of colson whitehead of the bright summer season's darkening and ending with labor day, with humor winding down to pathos. ben recalls moments with his father, noted in their beach community for his mastery of barbequing at the grill, a physician who attended schools where blacks were often numbered on one hand, before martin luther king and malcolm x, non violence and black power movements, were made visible by the media, and the sobering lessons his father taught, allowing no racial slight to go ignored by his sons.

colson whitehead layers on detail. he begins stories to interrupt with a flashback or another story of someone who just shows up from strolling along the beach, and pens moody descriptions of the beach and the water and the sky. and there are funny rhapsodies on frozen food, coca-cola and ice cream, and the island types who stop in the ice cream shop where benji worked.

an after note:

the obituary of colson whitehead's father appeared last month, march 2009, in the sag harbor express. a dartmouth graduate, in the early 60s when most large corporations were not hiring black applicants, arch whitehead began his own business research company, arch s whitehead associates.

Colson Whitehead can write like few other authors. His prose flows beautifully and hooks the reader (at least this reader). I opened this novel at midnight intending to read ten pages or so. I found myself halfway through a few hours later seriously debating whether I should get some sleep before work or continue reading.

Sag Harbor takes the reader back to the summer of 1985 as experience by Benji, a 15 y.o., skinny, nerdy, insightful, African American kid, who is obviously a stand-in for Whitehead himself. He and his brother are the children of an affluent couple--a doctor and a lawyer. They spend their school years at private schools in Manhattan. But, they live for the summer when they get to visit their beach house in Sag Harbor and hang out with other African American kids--mostly boys--their age. This summer is particulary intriguing because it seems to mark a transition for the entire group from boys to young men--and all that goes with that transition. One of the many thing that makes this book so appealing (to this reader at least) is that Whitehead packs in so many thoughts, feelings, escapades, references, etc. that are specific yet universal to the coming-of-age experience. Though I grew up far from Long Island and in a decidedly different social milleu, there was much I could identify with.

Aside from that universality and the exceptional charm of Whitehead's prose, this is a downright funny book. There is memorable scene after memorable scene. Further, no one who lived through 1985 will be able to read it without having several "Oh yeah, I remember that!" moments.

In many writer's hands this might have been a trite and stereotypical semi-autobioghraphical novel. In the hands of a master like Whitehead, it is a thoroughly entertaining examination of the steps we all take from childhood into whatever comes next. This is a writer at the height of his powers reveling in the joys of telling (or re-telling) a story (or stories). I am just glad that Whitehead invited us all along for the ride.

picked up this book by Colson Whitehead because I've been going to Sag Harbor since I was in the womb and the fact that it was about a young, black man in the mid eighties going there absolutely fascinated me because, quite frankly, I am obsessed with learning about the subcultures that exist there in that small town. So I requested it from the library and read it in about 4 days, it was that engrossing.

Colson Whitehead wrote this fourth novel as autobiographical fiction - he grew up in the eighties in Manhattan and spent his summers in Sag Harbor and his intent was to give us a portrait of what life was like in Sag Harbor in the eighties. The year is 1985 and the main character is Benji Cooper, who insists on being called Ben. Benji is a 15 year old black boy who leaves the city to spend three largely unsupervised months with his 14 year old brother in sag Harbor. His parents spent Monday through Friday in the city and then spent weekends with their children in Sag Harbor. Benji loves Star Wars and Dungeons n Dragons and reading, so he doesn't get into a whole lot of trouble in this book - he's somewhat of a nerd. The book's eight chapters include first kisses, removal of braces, figuring out who is "out" for the summer and securing beer.

Sag Harbor is well written, beautiful in fact, and enjoyable. It really transports you to the time and place experienced by the characters in the novel - I lived in Sag Harbor during the time in question, which may be why it was so easy to picture. I got a kick out of seeing places mentioned in the novel that I had actually been to many times while living there. I wouldn't say that there was a whole lot of plot - but Mr. Whitehead has indicated that the goal wasn't necessarily to have characters who learned a whole lot but the goal of his novel was to catch a slice of culture and context. If that's the goal, then he accomplished that magnificently. It was charming and enjoyable and just plain fun.

Go out and read this book!

Th synopsis will give you the story line - I won't take your time repeating it.

My opinion of the book: Sag Harbor should be on your summer reading list. To me, lounging in the sun, reading a book that meanders through the story, guiding us down the lazy river of nostalgia is what a summer read is all about. It is not a thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat, but there will never a tedious or dreary moment.

It is seen through the eyes of Benji, a 15 year old Black upper middle class prep school boy telling us about life as he views it, from his perspective, his angle. This old gal even learned some truths from that young man and enjoyed the lesson.

While Sag Harbor", a book of events, ponderings and rememberings, is low-key, the observations are rich, the words are masterfully designed to keep our attention and it is highly entertaining. When you close the book upon reading the last word you will know it was worth every second of your valuable time.

This is a somewhat rambling look into the life of an upper middle-class black teen in the 1980s. The narrator is Benji, whose lawyer mother and doctor father make his family seem like they stepped directly out of the Cosby Show. But Benji's life isn't quite as perfect as it seems. Most of the book takes place during the summers that Benji and his brother spend largely unsupervised in the beach town on Sag Harbor. It touches on adolescent angst, alcoholism, race issues, sex, and music.

Sag Harbor is a solid book with few faults. There's nothing particularly amazing about it, but it held my interest and provided realistic characters that almost everyone could relate to. It's definitely worth reading.

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.

This is a superbly written 1980's coming of age story, at turns comical (e.g., possessing the Afro from hell) and poignantly sentimental (e.g., the fleeting memory of when one's family life seemed blissfully normal for fifteen whole minutes). Everyone will relate to some part of Benji's story.

It was quite something to experience Colson Whitehead's flow of conscience - his musing on the secret life of a firefly, or his logic behind imagining himself as Greedo's "good" cousin. This author's unique style of writing grabs hold of you from the first few pages, and doesn't let go.

Sag Harbor is a very immersing and memorable book.