Last Days of Summer (Paperback)

~ (Author) "It's funny how the years have changed everything about Brooklyn geography..." (more)
Key Phrases: coconut things, most recent letter, New York, Charlie Banks, Aunt Carrie (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In and of itself, the epistolary novel is nothing new; indeed, Ring Lardner wrote You Know Me Al, his classic diamond saga, as a series of letters home from fictional White Sox hurler Jack Keefe more than 80 years ago. With Last Days of Summer, Kluger has virtually reinvented the genre in his picaresque coming-of-age fable of future sportswriter Joey Margolis and his improbable relationship with Giants rookie sensation, Charlie Banks.

The place is Brooklyn, the time is the early '40s, and young baseball fanatic Joey needs a hero badly in his life. How that hero becomes Charlie--and ultimately Joey himself--forms the dimensions of the novel's field, but it's the way the game is played that's so remarkable. The story's told not through conventional narrative but by way of Joey's abstract scrapbook: letters, postcards, news clippings, box scores, report cards, matchbook covers, dispatches from FDR, telegrams, even an invitation to Joey's own Bar Mitzvah and the gift list from the affair.

Delightful throughout, Summer develops a deeper traction when Charlie goes off to war, then turns poignant in its seemingly preordained aftermath. It is a triumph of style, to be sure, but a triumph of style without loss of substance. --Jeff Silverman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Mixing nostalgia, baseball and a boy's mostly epistolary friendship with a 1940s baseball star, this inventive but sentimental novel consists entirely of letters, fictional newspaper clippings, telegrams, war dispatches, report cards and other documentary fragments. Growing up Jewish in a tough, Italian Brooklyn neighborhood, Joey Margolis is troubled by anti-Semitic neighbors, by Hitler's rising power, by his parents' divorce and by his absent cad of a father. Craving a surrogate dad, Joey strikes up a correspondence with Wisconsin-born New York Giants slugger Charlie Banks. The boy's outrageous fibs, tough-guy posturing and desperate pleas grab the reluctant attention of the superstar, whose racy vernacular guy-talk (peppered with amusing misspellings and misusages) hints at his deepening affection for Joey. Charlie is a politically enlightened proletarian ballplayer with a heart of gold. His liberal views find an echo in Joey, whose best friend, Japanese-American Craig Nakamura, gets shipped off with his family to a wartime internment camp. In a plot that swerves from Joey's Bar Mitzvah to a White House meeting with President Roosevelt to a tearjerking climax, Kluger keeps changing the pace and piles on a slew of period references with a heavy hand. Despite these flaws, this debut novel is at its best a poignant, golden evocation of one boy's lost innocence. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks; Later Printing edition (April 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380797631
• ISBN-13: 978-0380797639
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (148 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #260,812 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Beach Read; Bring the Kleenex, June 23, 2000

By	Shawna Lanne "Shawna" (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger has to be on of the best books that I have read this year. I am not usually a big fan of baseball books but initially I found the layout of this book to be intriguing. The story is told through a series of letters, notes, report cards and newspaper clippings. Although there is a rich cast of supporting characters the basic story line follows the friendship of a lonely boy named Joseph Margolis a precocious, 95 pound, Jewish weakling, living in Brooklyn during WWII and a fowl mouthed baseball player named Charles Banks. It tells the story of how family can be made anywhere and it really did make me laugh and cry. This was fantastic.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent read, June 26, 2000

By A Customer

I first got this book from the library, and I thought it was so amazing that I bought a copy soon after. The format of letters, news articles, telegrams, report cards, etc. made it very easy to read, I zipped through it in a day or so. I haven't laughed this hard out loud over a book since I was a kid, and the end had me crying my eyes out. I made most of the members of my family read it and they all loved it. I would highly recommend it, it's a sweet, spunky, smart story, especially for people who like it when characters do everything right (for example the movie the Fugitive, when the main character was escaping, he did everything right to get away from his captors, in the same respect the kid in this book does everything right with his crazy escapades).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book I will remember always...with laughter and tears, November 5, 1999

By	Avid Reader "OliverTwist" (Connecticut, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Days of Summer (Hardcover)

I was skeptical about buying this book because of the format....letters..postcards...report cards etc. but something told me to buy it. I did and I can say it was one of the best books that I have ever read and I have read many. I wish Oprah would recommend this book. I am going to try to get my family to read it..I know they will love it if they do. Here's to you Joey, Charlie and the rest of the gang...you did an outstanding job.