Last Days of Summer by Steve
Kluger
I'm Heartbroken
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 novels field, but its the way the game is played thats so remarkable.
The storys told not through conventional narrative but by way of Joeys
abstract scrapbook: letters, postcards, news clippings, box scores, report
cards, matchbook covers, dispatches from FDR, telegrams, even an
invitation to Joeys 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
Personal Review: Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger
Been reading Last Days of Summer for a couple of months now. Don't use
a bookmark in order to lose my place every time I pick it up. I don't want to
finish it! It's that good and I'm going to miss it like a great old friend, when
it's read.
Oddly enough, the rereading works pretty well. "Last Days" is filled with so
much humor, charm, silliness and stats that I find new life in every old
chapter I misread - although misread is the wrong word. I do it on
purpose.
It's about baseball. It's about the 40s, Broadway with Merman, coming of
age in Brooklyn, Hollywood pin-ups, coping with bullies, FDR and Eleanor,
The Green Hornet, The Shadow, Reese and Di Magio, and resistance to
blending concurrent American cultures. But, mostly, it's about baseball,
serving as father-figure for growth.
I still don't know where fantasy ends and reality begins here - or how it`s
combined. But, that's why I won't finish. I don't want the world that's been
created for me to be explained just yet. For now, I just want to continue
living here for as long as I can.
Mr. Kluger, thank you! And MKA, thank you for finding it for me.
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