Lake Effect is nothing more than a sweet coming-of-age memoir, but author Rich Cohen hits his marks so squarely that it almost seems conceived as a stare-down between a life's story and the deadening power of cliché. Charting his teenage years in '80s suburban Chicago, Cohen focuses on his relationship with his best friend, Jamie Drew, a strapping young iconoclast straight out of central casting. So cool that even his teachers call him by his nickname, "Drew-licious," Jamie is a smart kid who never got the whole school thing, opting instead for a life "living in a pocket cut by his style and gestures." There's no end to the awe Jamie inspires in everybody he comes across—especially Cohen, whose idolatrous remembrance would seem a bit pathetic if it weren't so heartening. Together with their group of friends, the two best pals wander through a charmed life of nights at the lake, awkward first girlfriends, days watching Bob Dernier shag fly balls at Wrigley Field, and car rides "listen[ing] to Scarecrow by John Cougar Mellencamp, each of us worrying, in his own way, about the plight of the American farmer." With sparkling, plainspoken language that couldn't be less ironic, Cohen paints a windswept portrait of suburban adolescence almost too universal to register as real. He's great with idyllic, funny details, from a school gym teacher called "Magnum P.E." to the comings and goings at his town's central meeting spot, a greasy hamburger stand named "Sloppy Ed's." While his sleepy town endures nothing more monumental than softball games and sneaky beer buys, Cohen digs deeper into his relationship with Jamie and the rift that starts to form as various friends march toward graduation. As Cohen heads off to college in New Orleans and Jamie follows a Kerouac-esque road trip with a halfhearted stay at the University Of Kansas, Lake Effect turns into a meditation on the slow drift from boyhood to adult life. The book maintains a Stand By Me-level quaintness throughout—with only an errant Velázquez reference piercing its gee-whiz veneer—but Cohen's naked fondness for his past proves woozily infectious. While Lake Effect contains precisely zero surprises, it makes a strong case for the staying power of youthful wisdom and the goofy, moving ways it tends to linger.