TOWN COLLEGE CITY ROAD

An elusive young man struggles with the meaning of success.

Early on, McGinty says of his protagonist Kurt Boozel’s hometown that it’s “small, and there are eyes everywhere.” As the title suggests, this is a story told in four parts as it follows Kurt from awkward adolescence to a degree of material success. Kurt’s academic skill prompts a coach at his high school to ask him to tutor TJ, an athlete whose grades are suffering. There’s a growing sexual tension between the two young men, which further isolates Kurt. He hasn’t come out to his family or friends, and his hesitancy to do so is one of the book’s ongoing threads. The novel follows Kurt to college, where he becomes enmeshed in fraternity life, and then to a career in finance, when he becomes obsessed with a Bitcoin purchase: “It took 24 whole minutes to walk to work, and in that time, Kurt missed an entire crypto opera.” The story is set in the recent past; McGinty references both the Occupy movement and Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection. We follow Kurt as he becomes more aware of his own desires and, later, develops a penchant for boxing. The prose style neatly evokes Kurt’s penchant for mental shorthand: “His brown eyes widening = I need you. Or = I’m dumb. Or = leave me alone.” But there’s a cautionary element there as well: Kurt is an ambitious young man drawn to the idea of success without understanding what it might cost; by the time he drives through a winter landscape to a family gathering, he’s on the brink of a crisis or a revelation—even if he hasn’t quite figured that out.

An emotionally complex coming-of-age story.