This terrific first novel by Chinese-American writer Ed Lin revolves around a 12-year-old coming of age in New Jersey in the 1970s, burdened by his virginity and motivated mainly by the desire to lose it.
The son of a working-class immigrant family from Taiwan who run a seedy hotel on the New Jersey shore, the unnamed narrator is emotionally fragile but hides it under a veneer of tough-guy posturing. He spends his day in the "prison" of the hotel, where he's "Top Dog" on the front desk, renting rooms to hookers and johns, lonely old men whose shirts smell like hotel soap, and families whose homes have been repossessed.
He cooks his own meals of eggs and Baco Bits, and tries to hold his own against the sleaze and sadness of the world, dreaming of getting laid even as he flips mattresses to hide stains, picks up porno magazines and cleans the squalid rooms for the next customer.