This weekend in the Baltimore Sun, Michael Sragow examines "Finny," a coming of age novel by Park School alum Justin Kramon. The book is due out Tuesday, and Park students will get a first-hand view this fall, when Kramon returns as the school's 2010 Writer in Residence. Here's an excerpt from Sragow's story, on the author and his protagonist, a girl growing up in northern Baltimore County.

 

Finny "is the rare authentic coming-of-age novel. The protagonist matures without losing her sparkle. Her view of people changes as she adds new facets to the prism of her consciousness. The supporting characters also grow in unlikely and often heartening ways. Earl uses his gift for building up his friends and family to become a fiction writer. His father, a narcoleptic pianist, ultimately makes his condition part of a crowd-pleasing concert act.

"Kramon says he wanted the book’s atmosphere to be 'full of possibility.' And he knew he could root this sense of imminence in the story’s Maryland locales. 'There was just a feeling of both loneliness and beauty to the landscape there,' says Kramon — making it just the right place for an individualistic heroine to start spreading her wings. The 'spaciousness' that Kramon finds in Baltimore County gives Finny room to escape her sometimes claustrophobic family. And the area’s open-ended ambience aids the novelist’s quest to layer humor with high drama. 'Having comedy next to tragedy,' he muses, 'to me that emphasizes both.' "