Reviews for Summer

The average rating for Summer based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-14 00:00:00 Sarah Hardman The neutral ground Westchester County, just north of the British held New York City, time 1780 the American Revolution is in its 5th year, but the endless conflict continues, cavalry patrols by both sides keep the blood flowing, irregulars the skinners for the U.S. and cow- boys their opposite number for England, do much burning, killing and looting, essentially common criminals but with a pretense for the cause, doesn't matter which side. Harvey Birch peddler, suspected spy for the King, is wanted by the Continental Army to be hanged if captured, he has mysteriously escaped twice from custody . The ironic reality is that Mr.Birch is a patriot, working secretly for George Washington as an observer, giving the commander- in- chief valuable information . British Major Andre has just been executed, conspired with Benedict Arnold, tensions are high. The prosperous, loyalist family of Mr. Wharton lives in the area, a neighbor of Mr.Birch professing neutrality, yet with a son Henry, a captain in the British army. Unwisely coming in disguise to visit his father, sisters Sarah and Frances and Aunt Janette. Already another traveler Mr. Harper an impressive gentleman escaping a furious rainstorm is staying there, but who is he? The faithful black servant Caesar, manages the house. When the American patrol ( the cavalry is little used by the combatants in this war, because of the bad terrain), fighting their enemy , stops to rest the wounded to be nursed by the lovely ladies, (the dead buried) at the mansion, the captain is discovered. Hanging seems inevitable but Major Dunwoodie leader of the group falls in love with Frances, how can she be connected with the major when her beloved brother is to be executed. And what about her sister Sarah, a loyalist unlike her younger sister, how will she feel? Then more complications the dishonorable English Colonel Wellmere, a POW asks the trusting Sarah to marry him, not telling her he has another wife across the wide Atlantic Ocean in distant England ... Dr.Sitgreaves a talkative surgeon for the Americans, has helped many soldiers to recover their health, a somewhat cantankerous yet able man who likes to dissect dead bodies for science he says, the good doctor needs undamaged corpses. Always urging the horsemen to slash carefully with their swords, not to cause too much mutilation to the victims. The Skinners burned down Harvey's small house with his father on his death bed , but before expiring gets up and scares the looters from the premises, his ghastly face seems inhuman, a specter, saving the peddler ... Later moved to the headquarters of the Continental Army, Henry Wharton the captain has a short period to live until tomorrow, convicted of espionage by a Court- Martial, his family visiting him but a strange unbending clergyman hated by everyone, also arrives to give final spiritual comfort. Yet in fact is Harvey Birch, master at disguises also Caesar is there , can they free the doom captain? The first important American novel 1821, that is still read today.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-02-24 00:00:00 Leo Samuel Pratt My current reading of The Deerslayer has turned my attention to works by Cooper that I've read already, a couple of which I haven't reviewed here before now. Published in 1821, The Spy was only Cooper's second novel, and the first to be much a literary success; set mainly during the Revolutionary War (in 1780, to be exact --Cooper himself was born in 1789), it also marked his first foray into historical fiction. It's very much the production of a fledgling writer still developing his craft; it doesn't have even as much technical proficiency as The Last of the Mohicans (1826), nor as matured a moral sensibility in some areas. I've read it twice (the first time was as a kid), but that's primarily because, when I was homeschooling our daughters, I felt that my memory of it needed a refresher. Set in Cooper's native state of New York, the subtitle of this book is "A Tale of the Neutral Ground." The area referred to is the "no man's land" between New York City and its immediate environs, held by the British, and the American positions further up the Hudson, where they held their line defending the approaches to Albany. Villagers and landowners between the two might be exposed to the raiding parties of both sides --neither of whom were always scrupulous about respecting civilian life and property-- and to collateral damage in any battles between elements of the two armies. Not surprisingly, it was also a hotbed for guerillas and spies. Loyalties in the area were mixed; of all the thirteen colonies, New York had the highest proportion of Loyalists, or Tories (and was actually the only one of the thirteen to furnish more men for the British army than for the American one!). All of these conditions are faithfully reflected in the novel. Our protagonist here is young landowner Harvey Birch, a secretive fellow without a family, whose farm suffers much neglect in the course of his mysterious comings and goings. He's generally thought by his neighbors to be a spy --the question is, for which side? (And Cooper will enlighten us on that score only in his own good time.) But we're also soon introduced to his wealthy Tory neighbors, the Whartons, who early on welcome the family's heir, Captain Henry Wharton of the British Army, who's visiting them in disguise. (He's genuinely NOT a spy --but the fact that he's out of uniform could get him hanged as one, if he happens to be captured by the Americans.) In the course of the book, we also meet George Washington (whom Cooper portrays as more involved in hands-on intelligence gathering, and more prone to travel around in disguise, than he probably actually was). Some other engaging characters populate the novel as well, and the author does deliver a plot with considerable action and intrigue. Also on the positive side, he does not demonize the British and their sympathizers; one despicable villain here is British, but he earns the contempt of the other Brits, to their credit, and the American guerillas in the area don't earn any plaudits for good behavior, either. Cooper's style here is typical of the Romantic school of that day; his syntax is often convoluted, he's got a big vocabulary that includes plenty of long words that he's not afraid of using, and he has a very deliberate mode of storytelling. But I don't consider any of these aspects of early 19th-century diction to be faults as such, and I actually didn't think the dialogue was as unrealistically ornate as it sometimes becomes in The Last of the Mohicans (the latter was actually the only Cooper work I've read so far where I had a real problem with the style). There are no real moral conflicts or choices here that face the characters and cause them to grow. Despite the opportunities for dialogue between the partisans of popular democracy and of aristocratic monarchy, these are mostly ignored; this is not really a novel that explores the ideology of the American Revolution. Readers should be warned that tragic events are a staple of Romantic fiction; and the final chapter, which is projected 33 years into the characters' future, during the War of 1812, to tell us what became of several of them, relies implausibly on a lot of coincidence, and could better have been left out, IMO. Racial insensitivity towards blacks also mars this work; Harvey uses the n-word, and while Cooper's treatment of Mr. Wharton's slave Caesar is in the main positive and sympathetic, he couldn't resist "humorously" implying that a fall on his head couldn't hurt him much. (The humor doesn't succeed, to put it mildly.) By 1826, the author's recognition of non-whites as equal parts of the human race had advanced significantly; but at this point, he still had quite a ways to go. For readers interested in the fiction of this period, or in Cooper's work in general. this novel is worth reading; and it's not without its rewards in its own right. But it doesn't deserve more than three stars in my estimation, and I wouldn't suggest it as a first introduction to Cooper's novels.