My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, and Fenway Park

"Three teens complete an English assignment detailing their 'most excellent year' in this big, warmhearted tale about musical theater, political organizing, baseball, friendship and love. Tony Conigliaro Keller (named like everyone in his family for a Boston Red Sox player) and Augie Hwong have been self-declared brothers since age six, when T.C.'s mother died. Entering high school, everyone but Augie knows that Augie is gay, which finally dawns on him when he falls for another student. Meanwhile, T.C. develops an intense crush on the novel's third essayist, Al Perez, daughter of a Mexican diplomat now teaching at Harvard. While T.C. and his father share a baseball obsession, Augie and Al get close when both are cast in Kiss Me, Kate. The essay segments are spliced with diary entries (T.C.'s are addressed to his mother, Al's to Jacqueline Kennedy); e-mails from and between parents, teachers and Al's former Secret Service agent; reprints of Augie's mother's hilariously excoriating theater reviews; transcripts of IM sessions. The characters are a little too good to be true, and there's a distracting and improbable subplot about a deaf motherless child obsessed with Mary Poppins. The protagonists sometimes sound more like 40-year-olds than teens; however, the results are unexpectedly positive, opening up the audience to adults as well as the target reader. Ages 12-up." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"When this effervescent novel opens, it's 2005. But 2003 is the 'most excellent year' that three 11th graders at a Boston public school have chosen to write about for a class assignment. So, no, this isn't a Red Sox championship story, even though one of the trio, T.C., is nuts about the team and baseball history in general, all the way back to 1919 and poor Bucky Weaver. Baseball's just one strand... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) in the portrait of a memorable ninth-grade year that unfolds largely via diary entries, e-mails and IM chats written by T.C., his best friend Augie, who's a gay Chinese-American musical theater aficionado, and Alejandra, an ex-ambassador's 'stuck-up snob' of a daughter, who nevertheless 'could find a social issue in a box of Kleenex' and can dance like Gwen Verdon. In fact, except as a metaphor for social connection, baseball may be the least convincing part of it, with T.C. often sounding more like a nerdy dad than a 15-year-old ('Tuesdays are when we always go to Amory Park and re-play Game 3 of the 1918 World Series.'). It doesn't matter. 'My Most Excellent Year' is funny, affecting, smart and surprising, too: There are bit parts here for Julie Andrews and the Manzanar National Historic Site. And when the whole hodgepodge cast is assembled for the climactic moment, it's as good as a Broadway curtain call — or a neighborhood outing to Fenway.

Elizabeth Ward can be reached at warde(at symbol)washpost.com."

Reviewed by Elizabeth Ward, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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"The many characters are well-drawn and believable, and readers will care about them. The innovative format works well in relating the multiple love stories, and the story ought to appeal to a wide range of readers." Kirkus Reviews

Steve Kluger is a novelist and playwright who grew up during the Sixties with only two heroes: Tom Seaver and Ethel Merman. Few were able to grasp the concept. A veteran of Casablanca and a graduate of The Graduate, he has written extensively on subjects as far-ranging as World War II, rock 'n roll, and the Titanic, and as close to the heart as baseball and the Boston Red Sox (which frequently have nothing to do with one another). Since 1995, he has been a Jewish Big Brother to his all-time favorite 14-year-old, Avi. He lives in Santa Monica, California.