SUMMER OF ’82, a coming-of-age tale set in the rural southwest, opens with a terrifying car crash as an out-of-control Chevelle hurtles off a highway into a ditch. From this dramatic scene, the story jumps two weeks earlier, filling in the events leading to the crash. Best friends Ricky, Jimmy, and Buck are on the cusp of graduation from high school, filling their days fishing and drag racing as they contemplate their futures. Jimmy and Buck also have romance on the brain, as the two have their sights on the same girl, Jenny Smith, who hasn’t made up her mind about which of the boys to date. Their deepening romantic rivalry will, it seems, become the conflict that propels the two friends towards a catastrophic fate.
Author T. Allen Madding’s unabashedly nostalgic YA novel is at its best when conjuring up the quotidian details of country life in 1980s Georgia, painting an idyllic portrait of hot summer afternoons spent fishing for catfish and debating the merits of Michelob versus Budweiser. Light on plot, SUMMER OF ’82 meanders amiably through snapshots of the boys’ everyday rituals: attending youth group at the town’s Methodist church, grilling hot dogs and drinking beer at the American Legion, and—increasingly ominously—racing Mustangs in Buck’s beloved Chevelle. Madding renders this world with a sharp, affectionate eye; readers familiar with the small Bible Belt towns of his novel will instantly recognize such ordinary moments as chatting with a talkative Piggly Wiggly cashier or swigging longnecks in the bed of a pickup truck on Friday night.
These evocative sketches—peppered with good-natured humor—create a vivid and authentic backdrop for the action, but the story is less successful in its characterizations. As central to the narrative as they are, Ricky, Jimmy, and Buck should make more of an impression than they do. The novel doesn’t fully inhabit these characters, too often describing rather than conveying critical moments of inner conflict. (“Ricky was certain that Jimmy was trying to carefully maneuver through maintaining a friendship while yet getting the girl of his dreams.”) As a result, key figures like Jenny make little impression; it’s never clear why Jimmy and Buck are in love with her, and their jealousy and increasing discord feels distant and nebulous.
Steeped in wistful nostalgia, the richly atmospheric SUMMER OF ’82 recalls the innocence and high spirits of the waning days of childhood with a stunning eye for detail. While its characters don’t come as fully to life as the world they inhabit, the novel captures a long-lost time and place with a loving but clear-eyed faithfulness.
~Edward Sung for IndieReader