My Back Pages: A very smart start to Mark Slouka's Brewster

Started Mark Slouka's newest novel, Brewster, yesterday Slouka is one of those writers who's flown below the radar, or at least my radar - not part of the vast publicity mill that seems to propel and sustain the careers of many far-less talented writers than he (it helps to live in nyc, I think). Was drawn to the book by a strong review in the NYTBR, so good for him - and I'm enjoying if very much, having finished the first 100 or so pages, about a third of the way. Brewster is set in the upstate town of same name, in I think 1968, and it's one of the many long-life-lookback at the coming-of-age years; has many of the tropes of the genre that we're familiar with from other novels and TV shows (e.g., Friday Night Lights) - the narrator, Jon Mosher, is a smart and sensitive kid who doesn't quite fit in - is not recognized for his intelligence, only as a wise guy (in more urbane high schools there would be plenty of kids like him - reading Nietzsche or the British war poets at lunch hour - and they would form their own "in group") - he befriends the sensitive tough guy, Ray Cap, and the two bond as much over their differences as their similarities. Jon is a terrific character, very complex - his parents are European Jewish immigrants who got out just before WWII, his older brother died in an accident when Jon was 4 and family never recovered and to a degree blames the hapless Jon. Slouka writes really well in Jon's voice and very effectively captures the mood of the place and the era - too effectively, at times - I could to w/ fewer cultural reference points and lyric quotations, as I think the strength of the novel ultimately will be not how well it captures one era but how well it feels universal. One aspect I really like is that Jon goes out for track and we watch as he gradually exceeds his expectations, becomes a star, develops some (not a lot) self-confidence - this will obviously lead him away from his former friends, but not sure yet how. A weak spot is the very cliched seduced-by-beautiful-next-door-neighber-older-girl/woman - a very familiar trope that appears a lot in books and movies and not so often in real life. That aside, a very strong start to this novel, which I hope will bring Slouka more attention and, more important, more readers.