“Adam Unrehearsed will shake your soul out. It’s comical. It’s lyrical. It’s menacing. It’s gritty. It’s tender. And it rings true. Futterman’s novel returns us to that moment in our lives when we begin to try to grasp the seemingly ungraspable adult world. It brilliantly captures the shifting sands of boyhood friendships, sibling adulation, and the confusion that marks even the best intentions of mentors and students. This is a sure-handed debut, compassionate and propulsive. It nudges up against today and reaches back to the past where our betrayals and alliances infinitely lie.”

– Colum McCann, Author of Let the Great World Spin (National Book Award for Fiction), Transatlantic and Apeirogon (National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, Longlisted for the Booker Prize)

“This hilarious, deeply moving, beautifully written novel brilliantly captures the atmosphere and the angst of Jewish New York of the early 1970s. Adam Unrehearsed is an American Jewish coming of age story, whose twelve-year-old protagonist struggles to understand his relationship to the Holocaust, the Soviet Jewry protest movement and black-Jewish tensions, while navigating the torments of junior high school and his impending bar mitzvah. The portrayal of young Adam’s inner life, and his emerging Jewish identity, is one of the best I’ve read in contemporary American Jewish fiction. Don Futterman has written a classic."

– Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute and author of Like Dreamers, winner of the Jewish Book Council’s Everett Book of the Year Award

“Don Futterman is a master storyteller. In this gripping, moving, coming-of-age novel, Futterman bravely explores the often-unspoken boundaries children growing up in multicultural environments learn to navigate instinctively. With a sharp eye and a pitch-perfect ear, Futterman deftly brings those of us who grew up in Queens right back to that rich, complex, world—without forgetting those who would find that time and place unfamiliar. Most important of all, this must-read is a fun-read."

– Gil Troy, author of Age of Clinton and The Zionist Ideas

“Never mind ‘unrehearsed’—from the central character of the unexpectedly irrepressible Adam to the most peripheral cast member, Futterman seems to be simply the faithful scribe, chronicling people who already exist, in a school, and a city, that we come to feel we inhabit. Not only do they exist, they roar to life and they make us care. They make us cheer or they make us worry or, occasionally, they make us tear up, as Adam wrestles with the eternal dilemma of American Jews—which of those two words will define him, and will he even have any choice in the matter? Fabulous.”

– James Inverne, playwright & cultural commentator (The Impresarios, Wrestling with Elephants, The Faber Pocket Guide to Musicals)