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3.34 AVERAGE
3.34 AVERAGE
Yeah, I’m a sucker for this kind of solid, Updike-esque suburban drama and ennui.
The crumbling of the relationship of a middle-class couple. A hot summer and two younger adults. It's like something you would see in a domestic drama except better.
Quotable, dimly colored, frank (if not outright pointed), and with an ear for the unspoken dialogue that is marital sex, this novel about, mainly, the spiritual sheathe of middle age, is strong without overpowering the reader, and nuanced without hiding too much of itself behind artful sleight of hand. An appropriate but somewhat unsatisfying end doesn't lead the reader too far along, but, when still smarting from where the novel has caught on your skin, you feel at least ready for something a little sharper. Still, a well done book of domestic compromise into which, like the college town the book is set in, a person can easily retreat while they map out the path forward into their own aged interior. Nicely done.
There's a lot unsaid in this book, chiefly about the hothouse of being in a small rural town with a liberal arts college, all summer long. It's a different place. People misbehave. Having been a professor, I know that scene . . . and having lived in a small town with a liberal arts college during the summer: Well, that's a real and different thing, and not at all like what the kids and profs experience in Fall and Spring.
I'd say that the emotional truth here is spot on, and can recommend it to anyone who has spent three months in such a place at a critical turning point in one's life. In literary terms, the sign posts here are all about Cheever, Updike, and Yates.
I'd say that the emotional truth here is spot on, and can recommend it to anyone who has spent three months in such a place at a critical turning point in one's life. In literary terms, the sign posts here are all about Cheever, Updike, and Yates.
Aptly titled, SUMMERLONG is a funny, dark, boldly honest story of a marriage and what a hot summer in Iowa can do to seemingly reasonable people. I highly recommend this for a vacation read - it's a fun escape that at times feels like you're watching a train wreck. And that's not a bad thing.