In his fourth novel, Sag Harbor, Colson Whitehead tells the story of a group of “bourgie”, black Manhattan teenagers who spend their summers out in the Hamptons. Considered to be a highly autobiographical work, the main character, also serving as the narrator, is the witty and perspicacious, 15-year-old Benji Cooper.

In his own right, Benji is the black version of Junot Diaz’s Oscar Wao: he spends the school year attending tacky bar mitzvahs, playing Dungeons and Dragons, and struggling to sneak his first peeks of nudity on late night cable, but the comparison would not be complete without the mention of how on his first day of high school, he “bragged” about his fervent love for the horror magazine Fangoria. Needless to say, his social life was dead on arrival.

But the summers for Benji are different. They’re spent in the Hamptons village of Sag Harbor, where a small community of black professionals create a life outside of their New York City existences. He hopes that the summer will afford an opportunity for reinvention, to sort and straighten out the miscellany of confusions and misunderstandings that have taken hold of his pubescent Manhattan life.

It’s not without trial and tribulation though, as everything is on the shift. The culture he knows is changing- the New Coke demi-tragedy of ’85 and the evolution of hip-hop to “gangster rap.” His friends are growing up- the freedom of first cars, successes with girls, and the digression of some towards the “gangster” side of a boy’s black identity. And his family just isn’t the same- parents fighting, estrangement from his “twin” brother, and the distancing of his older sister from them.

But despite Benji’s sagacious nature, he can’t quite discern it all. There are things that he just simply does not understand.

The novel is ultimately a coming-of-age tale that highlights how the world around Benji is changing, and how he must figure out a way to negotiate through it. He is just trying to find a place in it all where he fits in; a niche in which playing with Star Wars action figures is still okay, and everyone is happy.

Through it all, Whitehead maintains his sweet tooth for wit, and conveys this tenderly affecting story with a comical lightness that is sure to please. His skills as a writer clearly match his deep sense of empathy for a period in life that all of us go through. The discoveries of being a teenager, and all of the things it entails - from first beers to first kisses (post braces, of course). There is a nostalgia on every page that surely each and every reader will be able to feel.

Appropriately, the portrait of Benji’s life that Whitehead paints feels brief and vague at times, just like the clipped and framed memories of adolescence that we all hold. They’re those memories of growing up that seem to become lost and distant as we get older, but are still there when we really reach for them.