Mazeltov: A Novel

In a glorious debut, a boy confronts queer lust, shame, the threat of war, and the plague of family on the day he becomes a man

At a banquet hall, at the onset of war, Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood-and the verge of a nervous breakdown-Adam has been bracing for his special day, mired in family neuroses and national dysfunction.

In a chorus of voices, a fractious cast of well-wishers narrates Adam's coming-of-age in Israel: his newly...