Summer Of'42 [Paperback]

Herman Raucher (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Dell Pub Co (September 1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440183480
• ISBN-13: 978-0440183488
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,828,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hermie, Oscy and Benjy Live On in Summer of '42, August 23, 1999

By 

P. Connors "Colonialpara" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Summer of '42 (Hardcover)

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.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars the poignancy snuck up on me, May 11, 2002

By 

john sergio (Wantagh, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Summer of '42 (Hardcover)

...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

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gifted writer tells a classic love story in Summer of '42, December 31, 2003

By 

Alex Diaz-Granados "fardreaming writer" (Miami, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Summer of '42 (Hardcover)

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.