JFK Airport. Kneeney has a 17-year-old brother who usually acts like a jerk, stays out late at night, and drinks a lot. Kneeney’s maternal grandfather, Pop McSweeney, dies that summer, an event the book references several times.

Besides Pop McSweeney’s death, little of note occurs in A Kid from Marlboro Road. Kneeney and his father go camping several times in the backyard or on more distant Long Island beaches. He plays Little League baseball (which he likes) and still serves as an altar boy (which he doesn’t). He attends a Catholic school where the nuns believe in corporal punishment, and he rough houses with his friends who believe in mutual bruising. Overall, it’s a typical summer for a typical boy on the verge of adolescence. If I were to write the story of my own 12th summer, the events I would describe would probably be like Kneeney’s (although even the adult me wouldn’t tell them nearly as well as the author does).

What makes A Kid from Marlboro Road so fascinating isn’t what happens, but how the author describes them. Kneeney already knows that his parents’ marriage is on shaky ground, and as the book progresses, he reveals many minor details showing how depressed his mother is and his father’s inability to help the situation. Kneeney’s father has also pretty much given up on guiding the boy’s older brother, so the summer becomes more of a bonding experience between father and son. He grows closer to his mother as well. A Kid from Marlboro Road imitates real life here. There is no magic moment in which the parents resolve their issues; instead, life goes on, with Kneeney caught in the middle. (This book is supposedly the first volume of a proposed trilogy, so some of these plot points may be resolved in subsequent books.)

A Kid from Marlboro Road has a lot of humor, but it’s mainly of the chuckling variety, not the laugh-out-loud, bizarre set pieces often found in coming-of-age tales. The most significant event occurs when the family runs out of gas late at night because Kneeney’s brother had taken the car out for joy rides and never refilled the tank (the car’s gas gauge doesn’t work). Their father lays down the law (over Mom’s objections), forcing the older brother to walk to the nearest gas station with a gas can to refill the car.

 The book contains a lot of period detail and references. Some of these, like the mentions of the New York Yankees (who were in the middle of a championship run), bring back my own memories of the era. Kneeney also describes how the Rolling Stones gave him an appreciation for rock music, another shout-out for classic rock fans. A Kid from Marlboro Road contains many geographic references to Queens and Long Island, such as a trip to the world-famous Fulton Fish Market. I’ve never been there, but the author’s descriptions made the places come alive for me.

Besides the empty gas tank moment, most of the book’s humor comprises wry observations by the author through the person of narrator Kneeney. The author avoids the mistake of narrating the book with an adult’s insight and life experiences. Instead, it sounds like what a 12-year-old would write. When Kneeney’s mother gives him some Eugene O’Neill books to read (the boy won a poetry prize the year before), he says. “Looking at the titles, the O’Neill books look really boring except maybe The Hairy Ape. But Long Day’s Journey into Night sounds like a tagline for the most boring story ever told.”

Author Edward Burns is almost the exact age of the fictional Kneeney, and his early life story is like Kneeney’s in many ways (Burns’s father was also a cop, and he attended the same school as Kneeney). Under those circumstances, it’s natural to wonder how much of himself Burns put into this story. In any event, the book sounds quite authentic. While that’s a strength in many ways, it also means there’s a lot of repetition, with Kneeney revisiting the same events multiple times. A Kid from Marlboro Road is short, but it also feels padded in spots to get to the length of a short novel.

Those expecting a traditional coming-of-age novel may be disappointed by A Kid from Marlboro Road. For Kneeney and his family, life goes on without significant life lessons or disruptions. But the author demonstrates that there’s a lot worth remembering in this coming-of-age story, even if there aren’t a lot of memorable events. Instead, readers can spend time with a typical Irish-American family of that period, not perfect or terrible, but entirely human and believable.  

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.