Book Review, Part 2

The second Kluger novel is Last Days of Summer (1998) and is his best. There, I said it.

Taking place in the 1940's, a young boy, Joey, starts writing letters to Charlie, a professional baseball (ding!) player. The novel is told at first through their letters and then through more letters, newspaper articles, and letters from other characters.

Joey and Charlie develop at first an uneasy big-brother, little-brother relationship and which then flows into a deep binding friendship. Probably some of the best scenes are as the goy Charlie helps Joey prepare for his Bar Mitzvah. They are hilarious.

In this novel, Joey is the intelligent one and it's very funny how he uses his intelligence to outwit some of the other characters in this book. Charlie is not too book-smart (watch out for his poor spelling and grammar!) but extremely likeable, funny, and clever in other ways.

Once the characters get involved with World War II, it's kind of easy to see where events will lead. The ending is bittersweet and powerful.

I read this book in one day and didn't want it to end. It's a rare book that will do that to me. I suggest you go out and start this one now!

The third novel, which I just finished this morning, is actually Kluger's first published book. Changing Pitches (1984) is not as strong as the other two and I didn't find the characters as engaging.

Scotty, the lead character is likeable enough, but he didn't grab my emotions as strongly as Travis or Joey and Charlie from the other books.

Scotty is a pitcher for the Washington Senators and the book is told mostly through his diary entries. As his career is winding down, Scotty suddenly believes he has fallen in love with his catcher. This set up takes quite some time to develop and the story is very baseball intensive. A lot of the baseball terminology went right over my head and I skimmed the sections of the story told in the form of newspaper articles.

Secondary characters are given little development....we get a picture of Joanie (Scotty's girlfriend), Joel (Scotty's shrink) and some of Scotty's teammates; but Jason, the catcher with whom Scotty falls in love, gets faint attention.

There are glimpses of Kluger's humor, but the book is fairly light-heartedly serious. Since the book focuses on Scotty, I think that is where it isn't quite as successful as the other two novels. Kluger writes best with 2 main characters and we can see both point of view of any situation and we get more rounded thoughts and feelings of the characters.

It's a good thing this was his first novel, as the later 2 show Kluger really improved his skill. I recommend reading Almost Like Being In Love first, then Last Days of Summer. You can skip Changing Pitches. If you read CP, read it first so you won't be disappointed after the other two.