CLAY

Over the course of a summer, a 12-year-old boy becomes aware of the injustices in his own community.

Set on Staten Island in the 1970s, Meola’s ambitious first novel is narrated by a middle school student named Luke. He’s part of a Portuguese American family whose members are outliers in their neighborhood—which gives Luke a vantage point to observe both the local White establishment and a nearby Black community that is often the target of racist vitriol. Luke is one of three friends taken under the wing of Jimmy, a young man with plenty of righteous anger—at one point, he looks at Manhattan’s skyscrapers and declares, “All those glass monuments to power and money”—and a mysterious connection to Sebastian Ward, a wealthy local. Throughout the novel, Luke becomes aware of a larger world than the somewhat sheltered one he’d known before this summer—and one where his family’s own fault lines and the corruption in the community around him are more visible. Luke’s growing awareness that the world is a more complicated place coincides with his understanding of his own sexuality. He alludes to his "secret thoughts (sometimes while jerking off) about naked bodies, male and female,” which adds another layer of complexity. That Luke is unaware of the full scope of some of the thing he’s seeing unfold makes for a tricky narrative, though, and a scene near the end in which two characters sit down and explain large chunks of the plot is especially frustrating. But despite this, Meola creates rich characters and a lived-in portrait of a corner of Staten Island.

A vivid setting and empathetic narrator help counterbalance this novel’s less effective moments.