by Joseph Freda
It took me about 10 days to finish this book. I was excited to read it at the beginning because of the subject material. The summer of 1969. Viet nam War. Walking on the Moon. Woodstock. The protagonist was a teenage, just graduated from high school and facing the draft, college, going to Woodstock...
But I could never ever warm to the characters and just plugged along. Woodstock was a back drop, the Moon walk was a paragraph that was also a setting for sitting on some canoes and some moon watching, the Viet Nam war was thrown in as sort of an afterthought another back story that really made little to no substance to the story. It just sat there like an elephant in the room.
And the heart of the story just made my teeth ache. His parents go into business with a real shit head. He puts up nothing, but they put up the family farm!! It made not one iota of sense to me that these people could be so daft! And int he end, the grand parents loose their land and their home. But his family comes out smelling like a rose...
An interesting angle was the mafia coming in and putting the squeeze on the shit heads son....
Drinking at a bar at all ages???WTF!! Even in 1969 this seems a far stretch. I remember my swimming coach taking us into a bar (what was he thinking!!!) and we got thrown out. That would have been around that time...
An okay book, Really wanted much much more out of it. Written too much like an adult remembering his childhood than a book written from the view point of a kid.
Just went to Amazon for the review and I am trulyin the minority. Every reviewer loved the book. Oh well...
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