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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
The tense relationship and/or crumbling family novel seems to be a dime a dozen the past couple years. This is one of the good ones. It’s not perfect–the closing chapters of the book are awkward and choppy and the character development is uneven. But most of the story is sexy, appropriately claustrophobic, offbeat, and very, very readable.
In general, I'm kind of bored by male authors' book of marital ennui.
I enjoy Dean Bakopoulos's writing style, but that's the only good part of this book.
I can buy the small town coincidences in the beginning of the book. Dan meets ABC, Claire meets Charlie, ABC and Charlie meet, Charlie is supposed to call Dan, Claire and ABC know Charlie's dad... I can suspend my disbelief and really dive into the small town aspect of it all. But then at the end, it went from heavily coincidental to insultingly implausible.
I was very frustrated that the cover and blurb don't allude to how dark the book will be.
I can buy the small town coincidences in the beginning of the book. Dan meets ABC, Claire meets Charlie, ABC and Charlie meet, Charlie is supposed to call Dan, Claire and ABC know Charlie's dad... I can suspend my disbelief and really dive into the small town aspect of it all. But then at the end, it went from heavily coincidental to insultingly implausible.
I was very frustrated that the cover and blurb don't allude to how dark the book will be.
This book is the love child of Richard Ford’s Independence Day and the movie Winter Passing. I hated the Ford novel (but have to give it another shot one of these days since Ford’s short stories are excellent), loved the movie and my feelings for Summerlong fall somewhere in the middle (but much closer to the Independence Day side of the scale).
The children were poorly written. They were only in the novel to advance the plot/make Claire and Don an average middle aged-couple. Same thing with the characters’ employment status. Nobody in the novel had a (real) job, but they still managed to smoke a lot of weed (maybe Ruth was everybody’s sugar daddy). Don’s a realtor, or was a realtor (one that was apparently terrible at selling houses and spent all his money on cheesy advertisements?), before he went bankrupt. Everybody else seemed to be independently wealthy.
So many coincidences. Ruth was there to spout off nuggets of wisdom and, I am guessing, add “depth” to the novel.
I don’t have to like all the characters in a novel, but I should at least care about what happens to the main ones. By the end of Summerlong I found myself wishing all the adult characters would just drown themselves in Lake Superior and be done with it. The tv-watching-children probably wouldn’t even notice until a couple days later when they ran out of pizza.
The children were poorly written. They were only in the novel to advance the plot/make Claire and Don an average middle aged-couple. Same thing with the characters’ employment status. Nobody in the novel had a (real) job, but they still managed to smoke a lot of weed (maybe Ruth was everybody’s sugar daddy). Don’s a realtor, or was a realtor (one that was apparently terrible at selling houses and spent all his money on cheesy advertisements?), before he went bankrupt. Everybody else seemed to be independently wealthy.
So many coincidences. Ruth was there to spout off nuggets of wisdom and, I am guessing, add “depth” to the novel.
I don’t have to like all the characters in a novel, but I should at least care about what happens to the main ones. By the end of Summerlong I found myself wishing all the adult characters would just drown themselves in Lake Superior and be done with it. The tv-watching-children probably wouldn’t even notice until a couple days later when they ran out of pizza.
In small-town Iowa, a middle-aged couple and two younger people form a love quadrangle, sort of. The marriage is falling apart, the younger woman is having an existential crisis after losing her girlfriend, and the younger man is dealing with his father's dementia. That's the basic story.
I didn't really connect with the characters. I thought Claire (the wife) was annoying. Okay, you're tired of your role as wife and mother. Maybe discuss that with your husband instead of expecting him to read your mind and getting upset when he doesn't. A lot of this novel would never have happened if they'd just communicate.
I enjoyed the writing for the most part, with a few instances of wondering why the author made a particular choice.
I didn't really connect with the characters. I thought Claire (the wife) was annoying. Okay, you're tired of your role as wife and mother. Maybe discuss that with your husband instead of expecting him to read your mind and getting upset when he doesn't. A lot of this novel would never have happened if they'd just communicate.
I enjoyed the writing for the most part, with a few instances of wondering why the author made a particular choice.
Great writing with lots of beautiful phrases that will stick with me. Tales of domestic discord usually aren't my cup of tea; those who enjoy them will absolutely love this book.
I was pretty solidly on the 4-star train with this until about the last 50 pages...the ending just didn't do it for me. The book in general reminds me so much of "The Art of Fielding" - a group of people in a small college town, connected in ways they maybe don't understand. That book is more successful, generally, than this one. Some of the connections were muddy for me here; by the end, I kind of just wanted to smack Claire. Worth a read, though, I think.
Heartbreaking. Wistful. Beautiful. The slow build of summer reminded me a lot of Ron Carlson's short story "Towel Season" and the relentlessness of the story reminded me of Jane Smiley's novel "Age of Grief." At times I needed to put it down, take a walk, and come up for air but even with all the heaviness and heartbreak the writing made me keep reading. Not for the faint of heart but a really worthwhile read.