VICTIM

Recognizing what a “powerful grift” playing the victim can be, young Nuyorican Javier Perez becomes an in-demand writer, but with troubling consequences.

When he was 12, Javi watched his estranged father, a drug dealer, get shot to death in Puerto Rico. Back home in the Bronx, the boy was no longer your average poor kid, but “one of those tragic kids” who got special treatment at school. Coached by a guidance counselor on how to get a free ride at a diversity-prioritizing upstate college desperate for students like him, he fudges details about his life in his admissions essay. As a columnist for the school paper and then as a “new” voice for The Rag, a long-standing New York publication of note, Javi masters the art of taking “artistic liberties” in telling stories about racism, police harassment, poverty, and other subjects that “touch on the pulse of our culture.” He is only momentarily shaken after his girlfriend dumps him for his outlandish dishonesty, convincing himself he’s getting at the “core truth” of his subjects. They include his far more authentic, long-lost friend Gio, who spent 10 years in prison for dealing. All this has the makings of a timely novel, but in his first work of fiction, Boryga is relentlessly superficial in his depiction of Javi, whose supposed talent is never on display (excerpts from his essays are unimpressive). Lacking in convincing moments—Javi’s inevitable comeuppance is dropped late like a cement shoe—the novel has both an unreliable narrator and an unreliable author.

A buzzworthy topic given a shallow treatment.