That trust is undermined on many levels, making it difficult for the book's elements to come together. Sometimes the issue is voice: It's hard to imagine a teenager, no matter how intelligent, thinking as Ginger does, "A child does not perceive herself as such — not in the way that adults grow ever more concerned with their status, their chronos, as it shows itself ever more clearly on their bodies and in the shortening days ahead." Sometimes the issue is with resonance: Ginger sees a man's penis for the first time and describes its appearance without any intellectual, sexual or emotional reaction. Other times, it's an odd detail, like time frames that don't match up — graffiti from 1986 is faded and painted over, but a song from 1982 has just gotten popular.

These ill-fitting pieces seem far from the intentional, edgy choices Wolff has made as founding editor of the avant-garde literary journal Fence. The tensions at play on the page in "The Beginners" are awkward, disjointed; the book works against itself and never fully coheres.

. But the elegant, gauzy prose doesn’t entirely compensate for the novel’s weak plot turns. Ginger’s growing obsession with the Motherwells, to the point that she spends nights in their home, strains credibility both because of the age differential and Raquel’s pomposity—when she’s not outright condescending toward Ginger, she’s spouting pedantically about parents, sex and Wick’s witchy past. Theo, meanwhile, is so underdrawn as to be a cipher, existing largely as a symbol of sexual possibility. Those unrealistic characterizations feel intentional on Wolff’s part, not signs of first-novel clumsiness. But they do make Ginger’s character less compelling—so that, by the end, when the airiness of the prose must be set aside and Ginger is forced to make some difficult decisions, the drama feels muted and anticlimactic.

Admirable for its tone and insight into the teenage mind, but with a few mechanical difficulties.

nteressant en onzeker
De beginners is een goed geschreven, speels verhaal, dat je af en toe meesleurt naar de donkere krochten van Gingers brein. Een interessant en onzeker meisje op wie we allemaal een beetje lijken. Mooi in De beginners is het beeld dat wordt geschetst van het kleinburgerlijke Amerika. Nu eens geen glamoureus succesverhaal, maar een heel gewoon leven in een doorsneedorp. Mooi debuut, ik geef een 8.