EMPTY CALORIES AND MALE CURIOSITY

A collection of short stories tracing the journey of a small-town New Jerseyite from boyhood to college.

McLoof gathers 10 roughly 10-page stories that begin with a reference to an actual 2023 New York Times piece on Midland Park, New Jersey, a slow-paced, multigenerational “Forever Town” an hour from New York City. The narrator reads something ominous into that description and rewinds to 1994, when, at age 10, he attends his town’s Centennial carnival—an event too underfunded for real rides (“Carol Ann Mejury—our lunch lady—guessed people’s weights”), leaving only DIY attractions like a dunk tank, where his father sits until on-target balls land him in the water. More troubling is the narrator’s not unfounded sense that his parents’ marriage is faltering; his mother now sleeps in a sleeping bag on his bedroom floor. Smoking is ubiquitous—his older sister, Emily, his friends, his teachers, and nearly everyone else lights up throughout the book (his mom favors Pall Malls). Teen drinking, cocaine bumps, divorce, and a well-liked teacher who drinks before class sketch an environment of quiet dysfunction. Strong role models are all but missing. But the narrator’s love of film, inherited from both parents, runs through the collection, as do moments of unexpected poignancy, such as his mother’s disappointment when they skip watching the Academy Awards together for the first time; the decline of a local sporting-goods store whose owner refuses to embrace the internet in spite of his young staff offering to create a website for the shop; the surreal unfolding of 9/11; and the joys and embarrassments of early adulthood, from a first NYC apartment shared with a good friend to lounging in the grass with a crush (seemingly unwise during cicada season). Memories of small but telling transitions—like outgrowing a favorite suit—underscore the book’s wistful tone.

A quietly affecting series of recollections, at once light and full.