Publisher's Synopsis
"In a glorious debut, a boy confronts queer lust, shame, the threat of wars, and the plague of family on the day he becomes a man. At a banquet hall, at the onset of war, Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood-and the verge of a nervous breakdown-Adam braces for his special day, mired in family neurosis and national dysfunction. In a chorus of voices, a cast of outsiders chronicles Adam's coming-of-age: his Italian grandmother, a convert to Judaism who remains an isolated soul in Israel, the country she has made her home; his newly religious father, mysteriously absent from the festivities; his best friend, Abbie, who might or might not have an eating disorder; Khalil, the Palestinian waiter who offers a glimpse of a different way to be; and Adam himself, his shame and desire as he confronts his sexuality and the brokenness of his world. At once tender and lustful, a work of scathing
