Summer of '69 - BookWyrm

Hardcover, 425 pages

Published Dec. 18, 2019 by Little, Brown and Company.

ISBN:: 978-0-316-42001-3

(2 reviews)

Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century. It's 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother's historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, nothing is the same: Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests and determined to be independent, takes a summer job on Martha's Vineyard. Only-son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother and her worried mother, each of them hiding a troubling secret. As the summer heats up, Ted Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, man flies to the moon, and Jessie and her …

Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century. It's 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer at their grandmother's historic home in downtown Nantucket. But like so much else in America, nothing is the same: Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests and determined to be independent, takes a summer job on Martha's Vineyard. Only-son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother and her worried mother, each of them hiding a troubling secret. As the summer heats up, Ted Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, man flies to the moon, and Jessie and her family experience their own dramatic upheavals along with the rest of the country.

1 edition

Bridgman reviewed Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand

Review of "Summer of '69" on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

I had fun reading [a:Elin Hilderbrand|88301|Elin Hilderbrand|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1365687944p2/88301.jpg]'s [b:Summer of '69|42283286|Summer of '69|Elin Hilderbrand|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1540085775l/42283286.SY75.jpg|66244148] largely because I was just miles from where most of the action takes place—Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island—during that summer. I was eleven years old. The main character in this, Jessie, is thirteen.
Hilderbrand is described as the Queen of Beach Books, and she's happy with that description.
I read its four hundred and twenty-odd pages in six days, which is a pace at which I don't read anything. (Just think—I'd have read War and Peace in one month instead of seven!) It moves, for the most part, smoothly, though there were a few plot points that could have used some refining. Early on, for example, there's a scene with Jessie and a school counselor. At the end, the school counselor shows up again in a fairly significant way and you wonder why. (That might …

I had fun reading [a:Elin Hilderbrand|88301|Elin Hilderbrand|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1365687944p2/88301.jpg]'s [b:Summer of '69|42283286|Summer of '69|Elin Hilderbrand|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1540085775l/42283286.SY75.jpg|66244148] largely because I was just miles from where most of the action takes place—Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island—during that summer. I was eleven years old. The main character in this, Jessie, is thirteen.
Hilderbrand is described as the Queen of Beach Books, and she's happy with that description.
I read its four hundred and twenty-odd pages in six days, which is a pace at which I don't read anything. (Just think—I'd have read War and Peace in one month instead of seven!) It moves, for the most part, smoothly, though there were a few plot points that could have used some refining. Early on, for example, there's a scene with Jessie and a school counselor. At the end, the school counselor shows up again in a fairly significant way and you wonder why. (That might be less a problem with the book than with me. I have a mental block when it comes to remembering the names of fictional characters.)
There are a few anachronisms, starting with the front and back cover photos. New England beaches are rocky; you wouldn't drive a Mustang on them, and surfing wasn't done there then, though it may be now during the hurricane season. Neon yellow tennis balls weren't around until 1972 and weren't common even then, no matter how tony the club (they weren't used at Wimbledon until 1986). Sweat bands on wrists and heads also weren't a thing in 1969. Also, the type of feminism you see in some of the college-age characters wasn't prevalent then. Ms. Magazine debuted in 1972. It would have been extremely uncommon for a nineteen-year-old to correct an older person for referring women her age as girls. Finally, the novel is a year early when it comes to American involvement in Cambodia.
A few financial matters don't add up either. One daughter worries about getting the $3,000 needed to take a semester abroad while her mothers buys a huge house on Nantucket Island.
That's just my usual fussiness, though, and it didn't ruin the book for me. I got it in the free rack at my local library, which, by the way, says good things about the book, not bad: It means they had many copies of it because so many people wanted to read it.

Lee Kadin

rated it

Sept. 6, 2019