Bildungsroman

He previously published “Some Hell,” a gay bildungsroman that was a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award, and nonfiction with 2021’s “Image Control.”

“This Isn’t Going to End Well” gives off the particular radiance of a life lived hard, whatever else: as such, a brand of American bildungsroman.

Davis, whose book is subtitled “The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences,” focuses on the organization’s formative years, “an early life that deserves a bildungsroman.”

In his hands, a funny and lyrical bildungsroman becomes a surprisingly tough-minded assessment of himself and the medium he manipulates so effortlessly.

The novel works best as a bildungsroman, with Nkrumah elevating a young girl’s struggles with intense colorism, the traumas of abuse and betrayal and her eventual ability to love herself.