Sag Harbor

Praise

“Warm and funny, carefully observed, and beautifully written. . . . Whitehead seems to be having the time of his life.” —The Boston Globe

“Sag Harbor is a kind of black ‘Brighton Beach memoirs’. . . . The novel’s eight chapters are, in effect, masterful short stories [that] riff on the essential quests of teenage boys: BB guns, nude beaches, beer and, above all, the elusive secret to fitting in.” —The Washington Post
 
“Delicious.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Whitehead has tapped the most classic summer-novel activity of all: nostalgia. . . . The pleasure is in the way Whitehead recalls it, in loving and lingering detail.” —Time

“Surges and sings. . . . Stokes our emotions and intellect at once.” —Dallas Morning News
 
“Weaves a spell that is by turns enchanting, mood-shifting, and side-splitting.” —Elle
 
“Lyrical and hilarious.” —Philadelphia City Paper

“By acknowledging that adolescence’s indignities are universal, and that the search for self is endless, Sag Harbor brings this truth home.” —Vanity Fair

“Beautifully written.” —Details

“Imagine a younger version of Bill Cosby, only more lyrical and far racier, with added literary and sociocultural references at his disposal and a greater familiarity with what the book terms ‘the insistent gray muck that was pop culture’ as it seeped through the ‘80s.” —Newsday

“Whitehead has a David Foster Wallace-esque knack for punctuating meticulously figurative constructions with deadpan slacker wit.” —The Los Angeles Times

“All of Whitehead’s previous books were various degrees of funny, and Sag Harbor is funnier than all three combined.” —The Village Voice
 
 “[J]ust as Benji is in the process of remaking himself, one gets the feeling after reading Sag Harbor that Whitehead is taking his first artistic steps away from what has come to be expected from ‘Colson Whitehead.’ And it’s safe to say, we’re happy, and very lucky, to have both the who he was and the who he’ll become out there, telling us like it is.”  —The San Francisco Chronicle
 
“[A] wise, affectionate novel.” —The Washington Post
 
“Ebullient, supremely confident.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune

“He can write sentences like nobody’s business, and the deepest satisfaction in this book full of them is his crafty turn of phrase.” —Bloomberg News

“Effortlessly readable. . . . Masterful at re-creating the organized chaos of the teenage mind.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer