Finny

In his impressive debut, Kramon takes on a number of familiar coming-of-age plots—smalltown fish-out-of-water adolescence, frustrated first love, boarding school friendships, big city escapes—and pulls it all off with flair and humor. A 14-year-old misfit in her Maryland hometown, Finny Short is sent to boarding school by her conservative parents soon after acting on a crush on mysterious boy-next-door Earl. At posh Thorndon, she finds an unlikely best friend in Judith, a beautiful heiress who thinks nothing of catching a ride in Peter Jennings's car; together, Earl and Judith prove unexpectedly influential throughout Finny's teenage years, as well as her passage through college. Kramon is at his best sending up Finny's innocence by means of an endearing, Dickensian coterie of side characters like androgynous dorm matron Poplan and Earl's father, a narcoleptic pianist who falls asleep in the middle of performances. Combining snappy dialogue, frank attention to sex, and convincingly detailed characters—eccentric and sympathetic, but not sentimental—Kramon is clearly a find. (July)