Daly, Maureen (1942). Seventeenth Summer. NY: Simon Pulse. ISBN:0671619314. 291 pages.

Summary and Evaluation: Angie's spent her high school years at a private girl's school. In the summer before college, she meets local basketball star, Jack, and engages in her first romance. She's rather prim and proper, and her behavior could be seen by some readers as boring and passive. I credited it to era and upbringing. If you look past the fact she will barely touch Jack's hand for the half the novel, and freaks out when he clicks his ice cream spoon with his teeth, what you become witness to is an internal dialog about growing up. Throughout the novel, she struggles with what she feels and how to express it. There are some great moments in the book where she discusses the sudden transformation from child to adult: one moment she is happily catching pollywogs, and the next her thoughts are consumed by boys, and mortality, and her future.

This transitional dichotomy is made all the more clear and believable with the addition of her older and younger sisters. And the secondary storyline of her sister Lorraine is especially engaging.

Written when she herself was still a teenager, Daly's novel has beautiful descriptive moments, and I must admit that knowing her age at the time of authorship only makes me like the novel more. I could never have written about my own teenage years with such clarity and perspective and am still not sure I could. Damn.

Booktalk: I might introduce this book with reading a section from p. 203 - 205, "Growing up crowds your mind with new thoughts and new feelings so that you forget how you used to think and feel."