LAST DAYS OF SUMMER

Although the novel “Last Days Of Summer” has been styled in a different way than normal books, it still made sense and got the point over. I liked the way it was organized because while I was reading each conversation I felt as if I were one of the characters in the book. It was sort of like I was Joey when reading Charlie’s letters and that I was Charlie when reading Joey’s letters. When reading I really didn’t feel like I was reading a book but more looking back at the conversations that I had had. At times it was good but it sometimes got confusing like when an event happened. This was harder to follow because you weren’t at the event; you only had what Joey and Charlie had said about the event so you had to piece it together to form the image that the author was trying to portray. This was confusing but after reading for a while you got the picture. This happened to me during the one part in the story where Charlie went to visit Joey. The story just jumped from them talking about hanging out to them talking about how they had already hung out. After a couple of pages you got the gist of what happened but everything was told in order of importance to them instead of the order that it had happened that night. As the book went on you got used to putting all of the stories together though. The conversations that Joey had with his psychiatrist were also told in a different way than the traditional novels. Their conversations were more like reading a play. The author did do good job though in making you feel as if you were Joey talking to the psychiatrist. The way that the novel was told kind of reflected who Joey was as a person. Joey was this unique kid that was different from everyone else; just as this novel’s form of writing was different than traditional novels.
The beginning of the novel was very confusing. It starts out with random facts about people that you don’t really get to know until the books starts to come together. The author doesn’t really tell you who is writing or why he’s writing. He even had Joey at the psychiatrist with the reader having hardly any idea why he is there. It is in this meeting though in which we learn that Joey is not the typical kid. He is this smart-alecky boy who knows a lot more than people would expect for someone his age. As the book goes on you see Joey progress into more of an adult and you see him start to control himself and learn important life lessons. Some of the things that Joey does doesn’t seem like it has any importance at all but later in the book he’s usually right about it. For example, the downstairs neighbor that Joey and his friend thought was a Nazi really turned out to be one. To the reader it looked like something funny that the two of them were doing but it actually turned out to be something legit.