Is Jim the Boy a young-adult novel?

Tony Early's much-praised first novel, "Jim the Boy," resists classification. If you were to just pick it up and start reading, everything about it, including the retro cover illustration on the original hb, would make you think it's a young-adult novel, and maybe it is for that matter. Jim Glass, the central character, is born days after his father dies and is raised by his widowed mother and 3 bachelor uncles on a N.C. farm. Story begins when he's 10, in the 1930s. He tries to show his uncles that he's ready for manhood, going out to spend the day with them hoeing the fields. Obviously he can't keep up, and he goes home ashamed and disappointed. This is a typical episode in the book - it's seen from Jim's POV, but we "see" more than Jim does and it's obvious that his uncles want to teach him the lesson that he should stay in school, that hoeing fields is not his destiny. The book is full of these sweet, anecdotal, country-wisdom episodes - each chapter is titled, and many could and did stand alone, at least one even in the New Yorker, a bit surprisingly. As the novel moves along, however, some more troubling and darker themes appear: who is Jim's grandfather and why did he hate Jim's father? What tensions will develop on the schoolyard between Jim and the boys from the remote mountain village (some of whom may know and loathe Jim's grandfather)? Who is this guy Whitey? Could he be in a relation with one of the "bachelor uncles"? It'll be interesting to see if Early pursues these more troubling themes or makes light of everything, a la McCall Smith and his so-called "sweet" stories about Soweto.