In a World of His Own

"The next day I told Dad I was sorry.

" 'I accept your apology, Mark.'

"But the next night he asked why I was looking like such a martyr.

" 'Because you're being such a fascist.'

"I was sent to my room."

It's funny when Mark measures the success of his own epic poem by whether it has grown longer than "The Waste Land." And it's insightful when he observes that "saying what you mean is an immense task -- you're honest and then no one understands." But it would be more believable if he were in high school. (We are told often that Mark is old for his age. Some readers will buy it; some won't.)

The plot is greatly subdued. The greatest conflict in the first half of the book revolves around Mark's desire to get out of going to camp. In the second half, two promising narrative strands emerge: In school, Mark is befriended by Bruce, a boy whose friendship he's not entirely sure he wants; at home, Mark's father, an activist lawyer, runs for Congress.

Both the friendship and the campaign are handled well, but they are often just buoys floating above the deeper currents of family longing and overly observant reminiscence that fuel the book.

An awkward scene at the beginning of the book tells us that Mark grows up to be a gay man in New York, a revelation that gives away the ending before the story really begins. Perhaps it would have been better to leave Mark on the cusp of understanding. His awakening, while weighted with the concerns of his time, still has resonance more than three decades later:

"Sometimes when I was listening to a song on an album I knew well, I could already hear the next song before it began to play. I had the same sense at school one day walking toward the library: I knew I would see Bruce. Then there he was, sitting under the mulberry. My intuition is becoming more powerful, I thought. It is as if I can somehow look around a corner before I come to it, seeing, just inches, into the future."