Snow in August

Rating:
Summary: What a disappointment
Review: I am so glad to have Amazon.com as a way to vent my frustration over this book. I read it eagerly for the depiction of the interaction between a young Catholic boy growing up in Irish Brooklyn and the new Jewish immigrant saved from a horrific Europe. Unfortunately, what I found was a sentimental and largely uninformed view of Jewish life and a superficial set of characters who stood as icons for real people. Then, after slogging through the book with the hope that Hammil would at least address the hard question of good and evil in real life, he decides to fall back on a Deus Ex Machina to save him from the hard work of having his characters find their own way out. I can only say to Mr. Hammil what he seems to say to his readers: Phhhht!

Rating:
Summary: an affirmation of spirit
Review: Snow in August mimmicks our lives. A young boy becomes involved in a basic moral conundrum and through it recognizes the affirmation of human spirit. The golem is but a metaphor for this: you can trounce us, beat us, gas us, and kill us-but we're still going to dance!

Rating:
Summary: Pete Hamill's "Snow In August"is a great read!
Review: If you enjoy a delicious book in the way others enjoy a fine dining experience please find a comfortable chair,turn the telephone ringer off and curl up with "Snow in August" by Pete Hamill. Hamill will transport you into the intimate thoughts of 11 year old Michael Devlin as he is made aware of love and hate,malice and kindness as well as the joys,fears,pleasures and heartaches of friendships and hardships in post-world war 2 America. As Hamill weaves this tale with his exquisite use of the English language,(as well as smatterings of Yiddish)you will find yourself laughing,crying,and at times filled with rage but you will be captivated from beginning to ending.

Rating:
Summary: What a joy to read....
Review: My goodness how i loved reading this book! I actually envisioned myself at times sitting in Michael's apartment with his mother, sharing the loneliness of a boy growing up without a father. Wanting to be both a friend and parent to him. You could actually FEEL the emotions in the part about the local parishioners marching down to help the Rabbi clean the grafitti off the synagogue walls, the boy imagining marching with his fathers platoon in Belgium before he gave up his life for his country, felt like walking down and helping. God how i enjoyed reading this book!!

Rating:
Summary: very moving
Review: This book was a good read. all I knew was the book was about a jewish boy and an old jewish rabbi. I did not expect this lovely book. It brought me back to my jewish roots thatwere lost. It made me think about the jewish ritual, and the traditions. Maybe if you are not jewish you can't appreciate the book the way I can.But this was not about being jewish this was about tolerance of other people's beliefs weither they are jewish black, chinese .I was amazed by this author who is not jewish knows yiddish and the traditions and the kabbalah which I don't know and of Golem which the only reason I know of him is reading the story to my son. It was a rich story with a escape to fantasy which some people whould think is unbelievable but that is fiction. I loved it thank you pete hamill .

Rating:
Summary: Correction- Swantek Comments
Review: Oops! Somehow (brain atrophication, I think) caused me to give the wrong e-mail address in my comments on Pete Hamill's "Snow in August." In the name of fairness, and in case anyone wants to chew my butt, below is the actual e-mail addresses for moi -- both at work and at home. John swantek

Rating:
Summary: Where's Santa?
Review:

The jacket blurb for Pete Hamill's "Snow in August" describes it as "poised gracefully between fantasy and reality." The reality is that it is about as graceful as a one-legged tightrope walker with a loose wire sagging between the World Trade Center towers in Hamill's beloved NYC.

Hamill, unlike his totally believable and endearing Catholic boy Michael Devlin, commits an author's mortal sin. He gives us a good read and then cuts us off at the knees by bringing the book to an abrupt, unbelievable, lazy ending. It's like the National Lampoon once preached in its article "How to Write Good." If you are stuck for an ending just say, "But suddenly I am run over by a truck."

For those, including, perhaps, Hamill who might dismiss this as anti-fantasy drivel, let me say I have read more than my share of fantasy. Fantasy creates a special place true to its own principles and brings the protagonist through his or her trials and tribulations WITHIN the resoucres of those principles. In a phrase, you know from the beginning you are in a fantasy world.

For Hamill to say "But, suddenly we are run over by a Golem" is just plain dumb. Having Santa come skittering along in his sleigh in the snow in August and bagging up bad old Frankie McCarty would have been much more enjoyable.

What is truly unfortunate is that, up to the last 30 pages or so, Hamill's tale is thoroughly compelling, extremely readable and wonderfully nostalgic to the 50-somethings of the world.

Of course the scorecard reads: Hamill- 8 million copies sold, Swantek-0. But. a great start could have finished with two healthy legs on the tightrope if Mikey Devlin and cohorts had planted in the flawed mind of Frankie McCarthy the idea that a treasure awaited in the synagogue. Having the anti-Semitic Frankie breaking into the rabbi's house of worship would have been, well, let's just say, the words would have written themselves. Set him up for a fall with the rabbi, the priest and Abbott and Costello standing by.

End piece: Little guys sit around discussing life and how they kicked butt. Result? Quick where's the next Pete Hamill.

Current feelings: Hated it!

Rating:
Summary: SNOW IN AUGUST is believable
Review: In response to [e-mail] on 8/1/97: As a person born and raised in Brooklyn, who lived in Brooklyn for close to 50 years, who was a social worker dealing with "gangs," and a staunch Brooklyn Dodger fan who attended games at Ebbett's Field, I would like to contradict your impression that "melees at the ball games were really unbelievable", that "a small bunch of young greasers can't hold an entire neighborhood hostage," and that "unfortunately that a shopkeeper could not be assaulted in t

Rating:
Summary: wooden characters, unbelievable melodrama
Review: My reading group just read this book, and there was a general consensus that it was one of our worst choices. I am really surprised by the favorable professional reviews it received and the positive reviews by amazon.com users. The former I might attribute to industry logrolling, but the latter puzzles me.

The characters were ridiculously one dimensional, the dialogue extremely stilted, and some of the scenes just over the top. I don't mean Michael's fantasies or the final scene, but scenes like the assault of the shopkeeper and the melee at the ball game were really unbelieveable. Despite the fact a major theme of the book is the struggle to overcome prejudice, the characters were very stereotyped indeed. And Michael's interior monologues were just unbelieveable, some to the point that I laughed aloud while reading them!! And the notion that a small bunch of young greasers can hold an entire neighborhood hostage to their egregious violence and cruelty also strains credibility--it wasn't hinted

Rating:
Summary: Snow in August is about character-building and healing.
Review: SNOW IN AUGUST is a moving story about a boy searching for values. In the midst of racial and religious prejudice, he discovers that the deepest of all values, a personal spirituality, is a powerful and healing force. What is more, this young boy discovers that this core of Spirit is the only thing upon which any of us can truly depend. If you like history, tales of growing up, and the mystic, you will be mesmerized by SNOW IN AUGUST