My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park [Hardcover]

Steve Kluger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 13, 2008

Dear Anthony:
I appreciate your recent interest, but I?m not accepting applications at this time. Your letter will be kept in our files and someone will get back to you if there is an opening. Thank you for thinking of me.
Respectfully,

Alejandra Perez
P.S. It?s not ?Allie.? It?s ?Ale.?

Meet T.C., who is valiantly attempting to get Alejandra to fall in love with him; Alejandra, who is playing hard to get and is busy trying to sashay out from under the responsibilities of being a diplomat?s daughter; and T.C.?s brother Augie, who is gay and in love and everyone knows it but him.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

In his first novel for young readers, Kluger revisits themes in his adult titles: baseball, romantic sparring, and social activism. Boston teens T. C. and Augie are such close friends that their families acknowledge them as brothers. Alejandra has recently arrived from Washington, D.C., where her father served as a Mexican ambassador to the U.S. Written in multiple voices and nontraditional formats, including instant messages and school assignments, Kluger’s crowded, exuberant novel follows the three high-school freshman through an earth-shaking year in which musical-theater-obsessed Augie realizes that he is gay, Alejandra reveals her theatrical talents to disapproving parents, and T. C. tries to make a deaf child’s greatest wish come true. At the center are heart-pulling romances (even a few among adults) and a broadening sense of what family means. A few plot twists will require readers to suspend belief, and the voices tend to sound alike. Still, the appealing characters are bright, passionate, and fully engaged in their lives, and many readers will lose themselves in this original, high-spirited story. Grades 8-12. --Gillian Engberg

Review

"A sprawling, comically pitched story...as tangled and entertaining as a production of 'Kiss Me, Kate'." -- Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 19, 2008

"Practically perfect in every way." -- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 4, 2008

...this is a rich and humorous novel for older readers...a fun, feel-good story with star quality. -- School Library Journal, starred review

...this romantic comedy is pure fun...and the story ought to appeal to a wide range of readers. -- Kirkus, starred review

A big, warmhearted tale about musical theater, political organizing, baseball, friendship and love--opening up the audience to adults as well as teens. -- Publishers Weekly, February 25, 2008

Funny, affecting, smart and surprising, too. The climactic moment is good as a Broadway curtain call--or a neighborhood outing to Fenway. -- The Washington Post, March 16, 2008

Kluger's easy-breezy and thoroughly absorbing novel channels the hearts, heads, and hormones of three high school students. -- Horn Book

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Dial; Reprint edition (March 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803732279
• ISBN-13: 978-0803732278
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,007,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

STEVE KLUGER shook hands with Lucille Ball when he was 12. He's since lived a few more decades, but nothing much registered after that.

Kluger is a novelist and playwright who grew up during the Sixties with only two heroes: Tom Seaver and Ethel Merman. Few were able to grasp the concept. A veteran of "Casablanca" and a graduate of "The Graduate," he has written extensively on subjects as far-ranging as World War II, rock and roll, and the Titanic, and as close to the heart as baseball and the Boston Red Sox (which frequently have nothing to do with one another). Doubtless due to the fact that he's a card-carrying Baby Boomer whose entire existence was shaped by the lyrics to "Abbey Road," "Workingman's Dead," and "Annie Get Your Gun" (his first spoken words, in fact, were actually stolen from "The Pajama Game"), he's also forged a somewhat singular path as a civil rights advocate, campaigning for a "Save Fenway Park" initiative (which qualifies as a civil right if you're a Red Sox fan), counseling gay teenagers, and--on behalf of Japanese American internment redress--lobbying the Department of the Interior to restore the baseball diamond at the Manzanar National Historic Site. Meanwhile, he's donated half of his spare time to organizations such as Lambda Legal, GLSEN, and Models of Pride, and gives the rest of it to his nephews and nieces: Emily, Noah, Bridgette, Audrey, Elisa, Paloma, Logan, Evan, and Robbie--the nine kids who own his heart. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts--the only city in the world.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THREE GENERATIONS ARE LOVING IT, October 24, 2008

By 

Monica Tapia "Monica Tapia" (Los Angeles, California United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park (Hardcover)

My father read it, my niece read it, and I read it--and it's all we've talked about at dinner for the last two weekends. My father loved all of the baseball references, my niece fell in love with both of the boys in the story, and I was amazed at how deeply moved I was by how much the parents cared for their kids. Not to mention the laughs and coming to remember that ANYthing's possible as long as your heart's behind it.

Our library has this one shelved in general fiction AND a second copy in teen fiction. Now I understand why.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my best of 2008 books, January 27, 2009

By 

Drew D. Ferguson (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park (Hardcover)

This was a book that definitely and swiftly made my list of favorites for 2008. It's full of warmth, heart and most of all laughs. After reading it (one-sitting), I knew it was one of those books that you've just got to share with someone, so I lent it out and sure enough, the friend had to keep it. Needless to say, I've bought about 10 more copies for friends and family. In Last Days of Summer and Almost Like Being in Love, I got hooked on Kluger's writing and his great characters; with My Most Excellent Year, I became a full-fledged fanatic. This is definitely one you won't be able to put down, and one you'll wish didn't have to end.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Spoonful of Sugar, January 4, 2011

By 

GreenG - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park (Hardcover)

One of the best parts of any online literary forum is noting wildly diverse reactions to the same book.
Steve Kluger's My Most Excellent Year illustrates the point that we need as wide a variety of reading material on library shelves as there are readers, in order to please a whole spectrum of palates.

Those who gave negative reviews, citing characters who stretch the bounds of believability and a too-happy conclusion without much in the way of real adversity are right, in my opinion. T.C., Augie, Ale, even the parents seem like incredibly evolved and self-actualized human beings; sad little Mary Poppins-loving Hucky signs his way into everyone's hearts; wise guidance counselor Lori might as well have "Pop and T.C.'s future wonderful wife/stepmom" emblazoned across her forehead, and by the end, everyone is practically singing a Broadway finale in harmony with their arms around each other. Fair enough; it is indeed too good to be true.

That said, isn't there still a place for the unapologetically joyful, the perhaps overly hopeful and earnest,world-the-way-you-wish-it-was novel? YA literature is jam-packed with somber dystopian stories, all betrayals, sharp edges and shredded ideals. These are worthy explorations. Young adults need to be challenged, to have their beliefs and boundaries examined, pushed, cast in sinister shadow from time to time; many incredible contributions to YA literature have been written in the past several years, and I am not even attempting to place them in the same category as Kluger's comparatively light and frothy book. But there SHOULD be room for a FUN coming-of-age story, with baseball, show tunes and light romance. It is, frankly, nice to envision a world where someone like Augie is allowed to be entirely himself, open and without fear; where withdrawn little boys are mentored and then adopted by caring families; where love, intelligence, creativity, passion, art, all the things that make life extraordinary, are celebrated. Yes, it requires a suspension of disbelief, but why not go there? We all need a vacation from stark reality, a spot of levity like a purple balloon; a reason to believe.