Kwame Newton
THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER BLOG
I thought that the epistolary style of the novel reveals certain details that other narrative styles (first- and third-person) can leave out. Even though some people think that an epistolary novel can't possibly contain much detail, this is most certainly not true. Steve Kluger does an excellent job portraying his fictional story of what happened between Joey Margolis and Charlie Banks.
When I first opened the soft, tattered pages of this exquisitely delicious novel, I wondered what lay inside. Would it be another of those ponderously poignant or unnecessarily nostalgic novels, or maybe something with a little more meat in the meaning? I was soon to find out. Within the very first "epistle" (the one in which President Roosevelt responds to Joey's letter, which was presumably about lowering the legal voting age to nine), I quietly chuckled to myself. It revealed so much about the main character in so little time; it showed me a glimpse of Joey's character. This was the point at which I knew I was going to enjoy this novel in its entirety.
Because The Last Days of Summer is written in a strikingly epistolary style, there are certain details that other styles of writing can leave out. For example, sometimes when Joey says something in a letter, a newspaper article about that topic is shown after it. Sometimes, as evidenced on page 79, where Charlie has a bad baseball game after Joey says something that Charlie didn't like. Another instance is when Joey warned that Belgium was going to be taken over next, but the officials didn't listen. In the end, Joey was right (as usual).
The epistolary style also allows for the best of someone's wit to show. In a narrative story, actions, events, and dialogue happen in real-time, which means that not everything can be carefully planned out by the characters. A narrative story in which everything appears to be "written" (seems to be thought out and not very realistic) can seem very artificial and almost insincere. Because the story takes place within letters, the characters obviously have had time to ponder over their correspondence. This allows for some very interesting and witty remarks. Personaly, I like Klooger's sense of humer. (Get it?)
The unique epistolary style of this novel allows for more time to pass by than a narrative would allow. Letters usually take more than a day to go from the sender to the recipient, so the time between letters could be anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks. This allows for many events to happen in between the letters, some of which are mentioned in the letters. This allows each letter to be filled with various tidbits of information, some of them large and important chunks, and others just for yucks and giggles.
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