Andy is the middle child of a working-class Jewish family in New Jersey. The book opens in 1966 with Andy 11 years old. We get a detailed portrait of him and especially his mother, a divorced, self-involved woman who develops an obsession with their synagogue's new rabbi. The book moves through Andy's life, up through his last year of college and focuses on his own coming out as gay, and his own obsessions with another rabbi and a number of boys.

Andy's voice as the first person POV narrator is very strong and well developed. His details of the 1960s in the first third of the novel are incredibly well drawn. As someone who grew up in those same years in a lower middle class Jewish family, there was a lot I could identify with.

The novel felt looser in the second half, especially during Andy's high school and college years. I felt that there could have been more information about the outcome of his obsession with a high school classmate and with his explorations of the 1970s NYC gay scene.

I was provided an ARC by the publisher via NetGalley.

I'm not sure I was the target audience for this book, unfortunately. Based on the book's description, I was looking forward to a dry and humorous story set in a Jewish community in 1960s New Jersey, but what I read was a profoundly sad and, at times, quite upsetting, story about a young gay boy with an absent and abusive mother, who herself is victim of abuse. I did enjoy some of the writing, which, at times, felt reminiscent of Chaim Potok. At other points, the writing felt more like a play with stage directions, which wasn't entirely to my taste. I think there are readers out there who would enjoy this one—it just wasn't what I was looking to read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.