Swinehart on Munson’s Debut ‘November Criminals’

In The Chicago Tribune, Kirk Swinehart, assistant professor of history, reviews November Criminals, the anticipated debut novel by Sam Munson. The book is told from the perspective of Addison Schacht, an intelligent high school senior who is “a motherless crackerjack Latin student and smalltime pot dealer from ‘a tree-heavy upper-middle-class neighborhood in Washington, D.C.’ ” By the way, Schacht also wants to go to college and is working on his application essay, which focuses on the question: “What are your best and worst qualities?.” Munson takes the set-up and creates, according to Swinehart, “one of the funniest, most heartfelt novels in recent memory—a book every bit as worthy of Mark Twain and J. D. Salinger—about the goodwill and decency that sometimes shrouds itself in adolescent vulgarity and swagger.”