Cliffy is a thirteen year old African American boy growing up in a low income housing project called Finlater, or Findlater, outside of Cincinnati. It’s a tumultuous year for Cliffy, as his wayward father returns home and he makes friends with a Jewish classmate, Noah. The two boys become more than best friends, as each awakens in the other new desires and feelings, but with all the things pulling them apart, how long can their relationship last?
“Finlater” is a remarkably well constructed story about coming of age in the 1970s. The author has not only captured exactly how a young man views the world around him, but also the way people really talked in an age before political correctness became so pervasive. The dialog is so frankly true to its time as to make you slightly uncomfortable.
Many contemporary stories about teenagers tend to portray them as either more mature than they really are, or as angst-filled adolescents who spend hours worrying over the tiniest details of their lives, but Cliffy and Noah ring true to their age, as well as the times they grew up in. Having grown up around the same time, although in quite different circumstances, I found myself readily identifying with the way grownups talked about other people from other races, as well as how young boys felt about their parents and teachers.
With everything that’s going on around the two boys, there’s a great many possibilities for distractions, yet the story remains sharply focused on Cliffy. Unfortunately, that focus ends up being the book’s only significant weakness – and how significant it is depends on your own personal feelings. What we end up with is a year in the life of a young boy. It’s a very significant year, in which he learns much about himself and the way the world around him works, but with an ending that just sort of trails off and doesn’t give us any indication of how these momentous events have affected his future, we’re left a little disappointed.
“Finlater” is available from Amazon
