You Know Who You Are

January 17, 2011
Middle child Jacob Vine searches for his place in the world and in his family in Dolnick's wryly comic if unsurprising follow-up to Zoology. Sandwiched between golden child Will and deadly adorable younger sister Cara, Jacob never quite figures out his role, and after his mother dies of cancer when he's in seventh grade, Jacob, ill-equipped to even manage his first real romantic relationship, must add a new dimension to his half-formed identity: motherlessness. He eventually finds a niche studying biology. Of course, Jacob's fictional liberal arts college in the Adirondacks isn't Harvard, Will's alma mater, but Jacob takes to it and agreeably shuffles through the leaving-the-nest gauntlet. Dolnick can admirably distill complex adolescent angst down to precise phrases, and he has an easy hand with Jacob's adolescent romance, though the strained relationship between the brothers (Cara seems like an afterthought) is never particularly revelatory. It's a solid coming-of-age in which Dolnick does his work quietly: sincere and direct, devoid of stylistic flourishes or narrative fireworks.

December 15, 2010

A suburban boy tries to make the leap to manhood and fails miserably.

One might expect a little evolution from this sophomore novel by Dolnick (Zoology, 2007). Unfortunately, the author rolls out the same humdrum anxiety and juvenile yearning that characterized his debut novel. Worse, this new story has an even more generic setting and a plethora of tired, clichéd plot points that make it a drag to complete. The neighborhood boy of the moment is Jacob Vine, a middle child struggling with identity and family in the cheerlessness of his Maryland township. His biggest struggle is his ongoing hatred of older brother Will, a smart and popular student who drowns Jacob in his shadow. Barely given pause is the cancer fight faced by Jacob's mother, and the terrible anguish of his ghostly father. Mostly, this parental absence seems to be an excuse for the endlessly navel-gazing Jacob to chat up Emily, the girl on which he dotes. "Over already," Dolnick writes of the funeral. "Songs, stories, death like a dimmer switch in the sky." While Jacob is terribly self-involved, Emily is a poorly drawn cipher, flip-flopping between cold aloofness and teenage lust with abandon. She's painted with that patina of desire that only pubescent boys can muster, but a lack of distinguishable character washes her out. The book follows their relationship, which ends with a hackneyed and regrettably ordinary plot device. But Dolnick clearly isn't afraid to trot out plenty of other chestnuts. From teen pregnancy to sibling rivalry, academic disappointment to first heartbreak, the novel's touchstones are all too familiar. In fact, they're so very unexceptional that the novel doesn't give readers any purchase on which to hang affection or even sympathy for the coddled boy at the center of the story. At one point, Jacob has a mild revelation about the interconnectivity of his life's events, but it's lost as quickly as it arrives.

An immature, unfocused story about a young man who's much the same.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 1, 2011
Echoing themes from his debut novel, Zoology (2007), Dolnick revisits those moments in life that truly define a person. There is no major conflict or ultimate goal here, only a journey through life and the evolution of one utterly earnest Jacob Vine as he navigates a fragile family dynamic, colorful friends, and a continuously strenuous romantic life. Told over the course of 15 critical years from child to adult, the novel spotlights Jacob in telling vignettes. Sometimes these moments seem small, like how sweaty hand-holding can be for a nervous teenager, but others are clearly consequential, like his mother falling gravely ill. Each milestone carries Jacob a little further along, though, growing a little bit more each time.The years pass by so steadily, always with beautifully constructed settings and fully realistic characters, that by the end, readers will feel a sense of nostalgia, maybe not just over Jacobs life but also over their own. Dolnicks quick pace and light style, paired with smart storytelling, will resonate well with the early-twenties crowd.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)