Snow in August

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Summary: a beautiful, evocative study of the development of a moral c
Review: Hamill's new novel is set in Brooklyn just after WW2. Michael Devlin, age 10, encounters an orthodox rabbi on a snowy day -- in August! -- and the novel develops a carefully considered study of the growth of a moral conscience in a young boy. The relationship between Michael and his new friend is drawn with warmth and understanding, and the period is well described. A most enjoyable read, easy but with many points to consider. My book of the summer!

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Summary: A wonderful book
Review: A truly marvelous story. I am a fully grown man in his sixties and I had tears in my eyes at the end. The author has given us a remarkable feel for the time of the forties. It is a wonderful blend of reality together with love, friendship, good over evil and right over wrong together with just a terrific dose of magic. The friendship between Michael and the Rabbi is heartwarming to say the least. The ending is so unexpected and uplifting it makes one feel good all over. I think that some of the reason for the tears was that the book is not another three hundred and twenty-five pages. Three cheers to Pete Hamill he sure has a winner here.

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Summary: I laughed, I cried . . .
Review: Over Pete Hamill's magnificent "Snow in August" I laughed, I cried. And I am still laughing and still crying. More than a moral treatise on "why can't we be friends," Hamill touches the soul of the mystery of the Holocaust, of all Holocausts. The question is not "why can't we be friends?" but "why do we look the other way when there is suffering and persecution all around us?" The book brought back many memories of my ethnic Philadelphia neighborhood, the exalted nature of baseball then and the joy it brought to my father and uncles and the boys on the block; religion and family as constants in a world that brought revolutionary change each day--a telephone, a car, a television . . . Can generations of Americans since appreciate that our childhoods in the forties were more like those in the 1890s than those in the 1990's? Thank you, Pete Hamill, and congratulations. You have created a miracle-- a good 'couldn't-put-it-down' read in the age of Con Air and Face Off.

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Summary: Delightful and reminiscent
Review: Michael Devlin and his rabbi friend are finely drawn characters who warmed my heart. Loved the descriptions of life in the Brooklyn Dodgers era, the young boy's feelings toward Jackie Robinson, and the fantasy that enables good to triumph over evil. A total pleasure. Am looking forward to reading Hamill's other books

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Summary: Excellant & Uplifting!!
Review: I was smitten with the other two books of Pete Hamill's I've read, "A Drinking Life" & "Loving Women". All three books are completely different in content, but extremely engrossing. If you haven't read his other books try them. I think my favoite is "A Drinking Life" because a lot of it takes place in Mexico, where I lived for a few years. He has a marvelous way of weaving you into other cultures, the Jewish & Irish Calothic's in this new book and Mexico and the world of newspaper journalism in "A Drinking Life". I can't wait for the next one!!

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Summary: Thank you , Pete Hamill
Review: As close to a perfect book as it is possible to be. It has humor , tragedy and wonderful characters who evoke reminisences of a time and place long since physicly gone but which still exists in the happy memory banks of folks who lived around the era about which he writes.. His allegorical rendition of good over evil makes for the perfect ending. (PS Pete, tell your editor that Abe Stark's sign in Ebbets Field was in right field not center).Immediately after reading it I sent 5 copies as gifts.It was wonderful.

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Summary: Snow in August by Pete Hamill
Review: The neighborhood in which Hamill is writing about is where I grew up. I was raised around the corner from "the temple, the armory and the factory". I passed by the temple every day on my way to "Catholic school." I can hear a Rabbi blowing the Shofar. I climbed the fence in front of the factory in an attempt to collect my lost Spaldine. The comic books and the New York Yankees were a main stay with local kids. We dreamed of becoming the next Reggie Jackson and Thurmon Munson. We spoke the name Jackie Robinson in hopes that Ebbets Field would come alive again;"Shazam!" We "borrowed" our mother's broomsticks to play stickball.Dreamt of a time when the Dodgers would return home to Brooklyn. We lived a life in which all faiths integrated. Race discriminated amongst our elders. Baseball kept us grounded and occupied. There were local gangs.
The reality of "Snow in August" takes on the coldness of another's heart.This shares a common love of language;baseball or Yiddish-the words combine into a homerun at Ebbetts Field. The snow will melt your heart the same way Jackie Robinson stole the hearts of fellow Brooklynites.

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Summary: How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Novel
Review: The first 200 pages of this book are a fantastic journey into the world of post World War II Brooklyn. The beginning of the novel is captivating with a great plot and interesting characters. However, the author destroys his own book with the worst ending of a novel I have ever read. It seems as if the author was so massively confused about how to end his book that he just defaulted to magic. If you have a book that is perfectly grounded in reality, introducing a magical element in the last two chapters is the worst possible decision an author can make. Everyone would like to solve their problems with magic, but real people find real ways to solve their problems. Thank you Mr. Hamill for disenchanting me.

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Summary: Magical Realism in Brooklyn
Review: Many of the reviewers are missing the point of the ending by taking it literally--"unbelieveable" is exactly what the author is doing. I guess he could have said "then Michael, with the courage of his father and the rabbi welling inside him, went to the police."

This comes out of the tradition of magical realism familiar to readers of Isabel Allende, Singer, Marquez...and the author has been building up to it throughout the book. The family stories about Finn McCool, the dog Sticky, the boy's ability to absorb the rabbi's talkes of Prague, all build a world where going to the police to do the right thing takes a magical black dog, a golem and snow in August. And isn't it more satisfying to send the Falcons out naked into the snow? You know they just went to jail...Michael earlier visualized their bad ends (killed in jail, died in alley, etc.).

I really liked that Michael seemed to be realizing that he really did live in a world with heroes that weren't in his comic books--the Catholic Father, his mother and father, the guys who cleaned up the synagogue, the guys at the ball game, Jackie Robinson (and I would love to know what mythic figure Jackie Robinson had standing next to him when he was at bat being booed) and ultimately, the rabbi and his wife.

This is a nice partner to Kavalier and Clay, which covers some of the same territory in a very different way.

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Summary: Read it and decide for yourself
Review: I've thought a lot about the ending of "Snow in August," and I've come away with mixed feelings. Many reviewers have commented on the last forty pages, and I have to admit it is not the way I would have liked the book to end. But it is Hamill's story to write the way he wants, and I have to concede that he set this ending up during the course of the book. The ending didn't come out of nowhere, and I guess you'll have to read the book to decide for yourself. But it will be worth it, because before we get to the conclusion you'll discover some of the most moving story-telling I have ever experienced. Hamill, probably relying on experiences of his own youth, does an excellent job of setting up his cast of Brooklyn characters: the Devlin family, mother and son and deceased father, the Rabbi, the Catholic parish members, Frankie McCarthy and his gang of thugs, the Falcons. The terror he builds is almost unbearable at times - the scenes of beating and torture are gut-wrenching. I found reading this book an emotional experience like no other. Even the final tableau of this book was very moving. The growth in friendship between the young teen Michael Devlin and Rabbi Hirsch is exceptionally well developed through their mutual love of history, languages, and the Brooklyn Dodgers during the rookie season of Jackie Robinson. As I read about this unlikely duo, I kept thinking of the relationship between Huck Finn and the runaway slave Jim. There are haunting sections of this book that will remain with me for a long time. In fact, I think this would make an excellent movie.