The Last Days of Summer Blog

The Book The Last Days of Summer is a great book because it is unique in how it tells its story. Instead of telling you what is happening this book uses the epistolary style. This book is a chronological collection of letters, transcripts, postscripts, and any other type of script. Because of the funny and realistic nature these letters give a very real feeling that make the main characters very believable. The book is about 13 year old Jewish kid living in Brooklyn during the late 30s and early 40s. The kid is named Joey Margolis, Joey is beaten up badly by the neighborhood bullies because he is Jewish. As a result he writes to his hero, a baseball player named Charlie Banks. Joey asks Charlie to hit a homerun for him so that he would not get beaten up. After finding Charley’s real address and in the process killing off the records of a few of Charlie’s cousins Joey and Charlie have a heated dispute thorough the letters in the book. Eventually Charlie and Joey become friends (or something like that).

Joey writes the story of his life down in bits and pieces in his letters, by doing this the author allows Joey’s character to become clearer bit-by-bit. Joey is a smart punk, he usually gives lip to almost a authority figures in his life, his lying is compulsive and his attitude is bad. Because of the epistolary styles inability to directly describe his behavior it shows transcripts of conversations with psychiatrists who are frustrated with joeys, report cards with A’s in every subject but obedience. His report cards also demonstrate joeys delinquent brain in all of its glory. Joey writes to the Whitehouse and the Whitehouse’s press secretary writes back writes back. Because of the book being set in the 40’s the main methods of communication over a distance would have been written. The book is written in a way that it almost would be the result of opening old mail after years and piecing together the storey of what went on. The authors choice of setting the book in the 30’s and 40’s decades in which writing letters was common. While letters are written in this decade the historical events and figures of this period gives the reader the knowledge that the time in which this book takes place would not be safe for a Jew like Joey, or a Japanese person like Craig, Joey’s best friend. Because the epistolary style allows for the spelling errors in letters it gives even subtler clues to people background. There are a consistently few spelling errors in Charles letters, telling the reader that Charlie may not have had the highest level education that could have been given to him when he was a kid.

All in all I like how the author has used the epistolary style to shape this book into the story that it is.