Have you ever read Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly (1942)?
I randomly thought of it the other day and put it on hold at the library. I read it several times as a teenager and haven't read it since college but I loved it. If I still love it when I re-read it, I'll buy a copy. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to get a copy with the old paperback cover, which is the one I read--it's green and blue and has a painting of a girl in a meadow on the front. So far all I've found online is this:
and, so much worse, this:
Yikes.
Anyway, one reviewer compared it to Nicholas Sparks, but trust me, it's nowhere near as corny. At least...the 20-year-old me didn't think so and the 20-year-old me didn't like Nicky either. Another fan compared the love story part to I Capture the Castle, which I think is closer. I also think of Joy in the Morning, which, despite being about a different phase of "young love" (the first year of marriage), is similarly subtle, and written during the same time period and also set in the Midwest.
Maybe even a little like Betsy and Joe in its subtlety and setting (though not in its plot).
Seventeenth Summer is generally credited as the first young-adult novel to be published in the United States--which could be a good or a bad label, but I can always dig a dose of quality YA fiction myself.
Really though...it's so sweet. I'm pretty sure that if you are a girl (90% of you are) you will adore Angie Morrow and Jack Duluth and their youthful romance blossoming in a 1940s Midwestern summer...ah, Wisconsin in the summertime, can't you just feel the mosquitoes hovering?
I'll review when I get my library copy.
(Images Flickr and Amazon)
5 comments:
I wonder if I can find that on our shelves and take it on the plane with me.
I haven't read it since high school - a very long time ago.
Thanks for the reminder.
So I found it - and it's missing the last 2 pages - it goes from 288 to 291!!
So xerox those pages for me when you get it!!
(The cover is in bad shape too - but it's the one you described.)
I remember that--that the last two pages are missing. They were missing by the time I re-read it one summer in college. I think I checked it out from the library after that to find what I had missed.
Let me know if you like it as an adult.
Never read Seventeenth Summer but will have to take a look because of your recommendation. (I'm wondering what I would think of Betty Smith's book after these years, if I re-read it...)
i remember 17th summer - but i don't remember how i felt about it.
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