Customer Reviews

Summer of '42

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This is a great book that was a bestseller when it was first published in the early seventies. It was made into a beautifully evocative movie starring a cast of then newcomers including Jennifer O'Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser and Oliver Conant. It is a story of coming of age in America's first summer of WW II.

The "Terrible Trio" are three fifteen year olds from a Brooklyn neighborhood who spend the "summer of '42" on an island off the coast of Maine. It is about their yearnings, their misadventures, their fumblings with the fairer sex and their own newly discovered physical desires. The three are Hermie, Oscy and Benjie. When you read the book, it is obvious that Hermie is the author, Herman Raucher.

While the setting makes the story dated by today's standards, the story line itself is timeless and universal for the simple reason that this is a tale about coming of age. It is the story of Hermie's experiencing that rite of passage that all of us go through at one time or another.

But Hermie doesn't experience this summer in a vacuum; along for the ride are Oscy (his best friend) and his next to best friend, Benjie. With the three friends at book's center, Raucher tells hilarious tales of what the boys do to while away the empty hours of summer days in coastal New England.

There is the scene where Benjie reveals that he has discovered a "sex manual" and then warns his two buddies not to paw the book because "his mother might check for fingerprints." There is another well written scene where the three desperadoes attempt to pick up dates at the entrance to the local movie theater. Once inside, Hermie tries to "get some" and well......Let's just say the scene is funny in a poignant way.

The main object of Hermie's yearnings is a young war bride named Dorothy, whom Hermie sees on the beach one day. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. When I saw the movie in 1971 as a 17 year old college freshman and saw Jennifer O'Neill cast as Hermie's great love, I knew how Herman Raucher must have felt when he lived through his summer of '42. Raucher's description of Dorothy's beauty and innocence (set during a time when her young husband is a young Army Air Corps officer flying over Germany)is beautiful to read. After she meets Hermie and he continues to show up at odd (but somehow convenient) times, Raucher does a wonderful job of describing the budding relationship. There is a wonderful scene where Hermie runs into Dorothy at the market and offers to carry her grocery bags. What he doesn't realize is just how far he will have to carry them. He is a man on a mission but in a teenage boy's body. She is a young bride of 22 and he is smitten with someone too old for him and too married. But Hermie perseveres. Or does he?

Hermie's rite of passage comes when he least expects it and it is truly a case of being in the right place at the right time (or wrong place depending on your point of view). What happens is that Hermie finds himself and eventually is forced to realize that he is not the same person who woke up 24 hours before. Dorothy is his first love and the one he will never forget. The reader/viewer never will either.

As Hermie/Herman returns to the present (which was then 1970), he tells the reader, "life is made up of small comings and goings and for everything we take with us, there is something we must leave behind. Not an altogether brilliant or original concept, but a comforting one. In the summer of '42, we raided the Coast Guard station five times, had nine days of rain and in a very special way, I lost Hermie forever."

This book is one of those beautiful but rare novels that an entire generation discovers and stays with them a lifetime. It is also a timeless story of what it means to grow up, even if you have to do it a little before you planned.

...Having just finished a long and dense slow-read (a Salmon Rushdie novel), I pulled out "Summer of '42" and saw how easy a read it appeared and fell right into it.

The book began innocently and kept me entertained. It brought me back to those great age-old days of fumbling adolescence and the poignancy just snuck up on me. I won't describe the plot except to say that if you've ever been a teenager - and the longer ago, the more this is true - then you will relate to this book.

I saw the end coming but didn't mind. The author allowed a few page intermission from the laugh-out-loud humor for a touching and sad-but-at-the-same-time-sweet climax. I didn't cry but could have.

Although I'm 39 and married with a son, for the late night evening I chose to complete the book - with a scotch in hand - I was a kid again, for an hour. Not a child and not an adult, but somewhere in between.

For a dime it's the best bargain I've ever had.

-Jack

Hit movies -- Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, any of the Star Trek feature films -- are usually adapted into novels, ending up in book shelves and earning additional revenue for the studios that released the film. Often (depending on the writer who does the adaptation from screenplay to novel) the resulting book not only sells well, but takes on a life of its own as a beloved work of fiction.

Herman Raucher's adaptation of his screenplay for Robert Mulligan's Summer of '42 is one of those wonderful tie-ins that I, as a reader, hold close to my heart. While Raucher's autobiographical account of Hermie, Oscy, Benjie and, of course, Dorothy is very different in genre from my usual fare of military history non-fiction, Tom Clancy technothrillers, Star Wars-related novels and reference books and things of that nature, the novel does appeal to my sentimental side.

And how can it not? Yes, much of the material is taken from the screenplay, and even though Raucher uses third-person narration instead of the movie's first-person voiceovers, it is still full of laughter-inducing memories of the "Terrible Trio" and the description of the three boys' struggles against boredom on Packett Island and their growing interest in sex and women. Mainly, though, the heart of the story is, as in the film, the brief and bittersweet romance between 15-year-old Hermie and 22-year-old Dorothy, the very lovely and very married woman he adores from afar.

Raucher is a gifted writer and uses a gentle sense of humor and a fine eye for detail that raises this novelization to a higher level than the usual tie-in. His tone alternates between twinkly-eyed and wry observations about Hermie and his friends to the more introspective and bittersweet recollections of Dorothy.

"The house? The house was her house. And nothing, from the first moment Hermie saw her, and no one who had ever happened to him since had ever been as frightening and as confusing or could have done more to make him feel more sure, more insecure, more important, and less significant."

Although there is a bit of additional material to bookend the movie's events and "That Old Feeling" stands in for Michel Legrand's "The Summer Knows," fans of the original film will not be disappointed by the book, and first-time readers who have not seen Mulligan's 1971 classic will probably want to watch it after reading this superb novel.

I read this book when I was a young girl, and fell in love with it. I thought it was so sweet and emotional. I've been looking for it to share with my daughter because I believe it was from a time when life was simple and less threatening. More young people should read it. I also saw the movie, a long time ago and think it's a terric story!

I read this book first when I was 16. I had borrowed it from a library and searched for6 years to find it, but in vain. I finally found it here, but it was worth the effort as reading it again brought back a flood of memories. The book is amazingly beautiful and touching and is the only on that succeeds in bringing a tear to my eye.

In the summer of my 15th year, I found this book in my father's library. Having no idea what it was about, I started reading it at 2:00 AM. I was immediately sucked into it and did not come up for air for hours.

I could not put it down, and finally nodded off in the late morning, only to repeat the process and finish reading it the following day. I was amazed how well the author understood 15 year-old boys. I felt as though he had opened my mind and poured the contents onto paper and had it published. I was stunned by this book.

No book had moved me so deeply and profoundly. That summer, I read it over and over and it never got stale. The more I read it, the more deeply it effected me. It was as if I had looked into a mirror that reflected what was deep inside of me and I could never view myself the same way.

The plot: A 15 year-old boy, Hermie, spends a summer on an island with his family and two best friends, Oscy and Benjie. Bored by the monotony of the place, the three engage in horseplay and spend most of their time looking for trouble and looking for girls. In the midst of this, a woman, about 7 years Hermie's senior, becomes the object of his adoration. Any further desciption would give away the details that are better read in the book than here.

Hermie's romantic idealism of the woman, and his awkwardness in her presence, is so spot on that I doubt it has ever been done better. His friendships with his friends is at once close and antagonistic; friendly and frustrating. They have developed that complex and intimate type of friendship coupled with intense rivalry and antagonism that can only develop over time, and seems to be shared only by teenage boys.

Raucher is a superb writer. Not only does he have an uncanny knowledge of the inner workings of the teenage male mind, but his writing style is fluid and supremely easy to read. His use of metaphor is masterly and his ability to provide powerful character sketches with the use of only a few words of description (Hermie's parents, his sister, the girls at the theater, various bit players) reveal his craftsman-like skill with words. No characters, regardless of how minor, are one-dimensional and the reader always sees them exactly as Hermie does. Each minor character--or, rather, Hermie's reaction to each minor character--reveals an aspect of Hermie's personality that allows the reader to know him in a more deeply personal way. It is also surprising that this book runs under 300 pages. Most novelists require far more pages for such thorough character development.

Raucher's use of humor is so well developed that I found myself laughing out loud dozens of times. Despite being such a touching and deeply revealing book, it is one of the funniest and most entertaining reads I have enjoyed. But, by the end of the book, I was bawling like a middle-school girl reading a trashy romance novel.

This book works so well on so many levels--and has such immense staying power--that it rates five stars easily.

It is as fine a novel as I have ever read.

I first read "Summer of '42" as a teenager...I probably read it in the summer of '77, or near that year. I remember sitting on the front stoop of my childhood home, reading the book, and being moved to tears at the end of it.

Now, as a somewhat wisened (I hope, at least!) adult, I have re-read the book several times in my adult years. The book still continues to evoke the same feelings for me - that of a sweet young boy, with the usual troubling and frightening thoughts of impending manhood, and the relationship he had with his admired-from-afar neighbor on the Maine island where he spent his summers.

It is interesting to me that as the author re-visits the Island to re-connect with his youth, I also re-connect with my youth by reading this very moving account of a young man's coming-of-age.

As often is the case, I felt the movie doesn't do the book justice, as the movie, of course, doesn't go into the descriptions and thoughts of Hermie.

Highly recommended to anyone - all ages, both sexes..a book timeless in its narrative beauty, and universal truths.

Do you remember what it was like to fall in love for the first time; the feeling you could conquer anything and everything, and the world was yours for the taking? "The Summer of 42" tells of innocence lost and the magic of first love with the beautiful young woman next door. In good fun, Hermie is goaded by his friends to speak to a lonely, attractive woman sitting on a beach. She returns his good-heaarted gestures and a friendship begins. Hermie learns that her husband has goen off to war, and she is staying in a home on the beach. In a night born of a woman's loneliness and and a boy's youthful hormones running amok, Hermie's boyhood innocence is lost forever. He is in awe and wonder of first "real love." As quickly as it begins, the beautiful young lady who captured his heart receives word that her husband has been killed in action. With a brief note, she vanishes from Hermie's life like two ships that pass in the night, never to meet again. As Hermie says, "For everything we take with us, there is something we leave behind."

For anyone who remembers, the bittersweet feeling of first love, "The Summer of 42" will touch your heart and reawaken you senses in a way you thought you had long forgotten.

For any young girl who wants to know what really goes on in the mind of adolescent males, this is the book for you. An achingly accurate recounting of coming of age and unraveling the mysteries of the opposite sex. The drugstore scene alone is worth the entire read, and that is not even the best part. One of the few books that really makes you laugh helplessly out loud.

Although I haven't seen the movie/screenplay from which this book was adapted, and I'm too young to have picked up on many of the period references in the story, I found "Summer of '42" to be an absolutely charming story, and how I imagined youth was, back in "simpler" times.

These three young boys, rambling around an island off the coast of New England, getting into mischief and having fun, all the while displaying their raw innocence. The writing is so humorous (especially when it's revealing what's going on in the protagonist's head) that at times I literally laughed out loud. It's exactly as I imagine teenage boys in the '40s would be.

A quick read, "Summer" keeps you engaged until the very end, and leaves you with a warm feeling of nostalgia - for youth, and for first love.