YPU was, for me, his best book because of how vividly he painted it and how he twisted Jewish folklore and culture into a noir crime drama in a really bizarre setting.

He steps back from the fanciful in this one and goes for a more familiar setting and story and doubles down the riskiness by writing for primarily black characters. He mostly misses on the race-relations portion of the book, but you forget pretty quickly (at least I did) that that was a dynamic at play. His focus on music, film, pop-culture and fatherhood come off fairly authentic but, as usual, it's his descriptive, scene-setting prose that's most enjoyable. I've never set foot in North Oakland, but I can see it.

I think it's worth a go if for anything than to comment on how a white middle aged successful author attempts to parse a largely African American story.