Roadside Bodhisattva

A few months after 16-year-old Kid A runs away from home, fed up with his Buddhist slacker parents’ lifestyle, he teams with Sid, a veteran knight of the road, on the outskirts of remote Deer Park, Mass., in Di Filippo’s lightweight coming-of-age story. Though the Kid naïvely fancies a life of liberty informed by his readings of Jack Kerouac and Khalil Gibran, he puts his dreams on hold when Sid lands them temporary jobs as handymen at the town’s motor lodge. Soon, charming Sid is ingratiating himself with the locals, helping them to lead more fulfilling lives, and Kid A finds himself seriously questioning whether to follow Sid’s way of negotiating the world. Di Filippo (Harsh Oases) does a fine job of immersing the reader in the thoughts of his inexperienced teen narrator, but his characters are straight out of central casting and all so likable that none generates any conflict. Absent any true dramatic highs or lows, the novel advances on a monotonously even keel to an unearned surprise ending. (June)