The key question of Gray’s semi-roman à clef […] is not whether it’s accomplished, but whether it fills [its] grandiose conceit. What, if anything, do the adventures of a gifted but wayward wannabe artist have to do with a society’s encroaching rightward tilt? Does Gray earnestly conflating the ethical struggles of his youthful surrogate with the state of the nation suggest humility, hubris, or something even more outrageously overwrought?
— Adam Nayman (The Ringer)
In 1980, Queens, New York, a young Jewish boy befriends a rebellious African-American classmate to the disapproval of his privileged family and begins to reckon with growing up in a world of inequality and prejudice.