This is probably a better book than I give it credit for. I've spoken before about how much I dislike passive protagonists and books that value a detached, nihilistic atmosphere over story, and this book is a good example of both. The basic outlines of Lethem's story are gripping; a young white boy grows up in a racially conflicted area of Brooklyn during the 1970s, and finds common ground with a young black schoolmate and their mutual admiration of tagging and comic books. I mention tagging first because many reviews of this book don't mention it, and give the impression that comic books are the main theme of the book. By far, the main obsession and gestalt of this book is graffiti. That's not a slight, but by not mentioning it the reviews and blurbs I've seen are guilty of a disservice. Graffiti was a ubiquitous sight in the New York of the 1970s, and perhaps also a large part of Lethem's young life. The scenes dealing with the mechanics and emotions surrounding this activity far outshine those dealing with comics, or the random cruelties of New York's public school system, or indeed anything else in the book. It's thus a shame that this book wasn't at least slightly illustrated; if it were it would be a fantastic fictionalized history of the phenomenon. As it is, it left me a bit cold and unfulfilled at the end.