Best Books of Spring

"When we are in America we are Americans," proclaims the father of Max, the young hero of Karim Dimechkie's quirky, funny, often poignant debut novel, Lifted by the Great Nothing. But for 12-year-old Max, his New Jersey neighborhood is a series of open questions about just what an American is. His alpha-male basketball coach? The Chinese man minding a flower that blooms once every 14 years? Max's dad himself, a Lebanese immigrant who keeps batting away questions about life in the country where he says his mother was murdered? Dimechkie's tone shifts from comic to serious, as Max tries to get clear answers over the next five years and the novel's prose echoes the inner state of a teenager prone to mood swings. Max's coming-of-age involves a romantic and cultural awakening close to home, but he ultimately heads to Beirut and Paris as his need for facts becomes more urgent. All that movement gives the plot its necessary action, but Dimechkie is at his best when he's inhabiting the inner mind of a boy uncertain how to navigate a grown-up world where everybody is carrying at least a few secrets.