THE LONGITUDE OF GRIEF

Daddona’s immersive debut is both a coming-of-age story and a portrait of a community.

Becoming an adult can mean many things—some of them logical, others inherently paradoxical. In telling the story of a young man named Henry Manero, Daddona’s novel seeks a balance between the two. It has an immediately striking first sentence: “Henry Manero was born with one of those small hands that was hard to get used to unless you knew him.” From there, the reader learns more about Henry, then a sophomore in high school—his self-destructive approach to smoking, for one, and that he’s being raised by his mother, Alma. The novel’s first half occasionally pivots to fill in details on supporting characters, whether the story of a local anti-war activist or that of the troubled childhood of Henry’s estranged father, Benjamin. Much of the novel focuses on Henry’s attempts to understand what masculinity means to him. The novel abounds with men on the brink of doing awful things, including a moment in which Benjamin fails to be critical enough of his own thoughts: “It was only natural, Benjamin convinced himself, that he had daydreamed of a teenage girl.” Henry narrates the second half of the novel in the first person, and the version of him we meet here is older, both more aware of the injustices his mother and his friend Janine have endured and developing his own creative voice. It’s through his bond with an older man named Josef that Henry comes into his own, but the flawed world around him remains challenging to navigate. There are big ideas aplenty in here—and some bleak moments of moral horror as well.

A philosophical, intentionally digressive exploration of masculinity, toxic and otherwise.