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A review by charlotekerstenauthor
Seven Summer Nights by Harper Fox
“All that magic - that power to heal and change - might just be part of us?”
CW: Homophobia, war violence, sexual assault, PTSD, alcoholism
So What’s It About?
It’s 1946, and the dust of World War Two has just begun to settle. When famous archaeologist Rufus Denby returns to London, his life and reputation are as devastated as the city around him.
He’s used to the most glamorous of excavations, but can’t turn down the offer of a job in rural Sussex. It’s a refuge, and the only means left to him of scraping a living. With nothing but his satchel and a mongrel dog he’s rescued from a bomb site, he sets out to investigate an ancient church in the sleepy village of Droyton Parva.
It’s an ordinary task, but Droyton is in the hands of a most extraordinary vicar. The Reverend Archie Thorne has tasted action too, as a motorcycle-riding army chaplain, and is struggling to readjust to the little world around him. He’s a lonely man, and Rufus’s arrival soon sparks off in him a lifetime of repressed desires.
Rufus is a combat case, amnesiac and shellshocked. As he and Archie begin to unfold the archaeological mystery of Droyton, their growing friendship makes Rufus believe he might one day recapture his lost memories of the war, and find his way back from the edge of insanity to love.
It’s summer on the South Downs, the air full of sunshine and enchantment. And Rufus and Archie’s seven summer nights have just begun…
What I Thought
When I look back at this book, I’m quite surprised by just how much there is to talk about, how much Fox managed to fit into what could have been a sweet, simple romance and still have been very effective.
The romance is at the heart of the book, and it is a very good romance. Rufus and Archie are both sympathetic characters and the way they fall in love is written in a lovely way. Unconventional vicar Archie welcomes a world-weary Rufus into his cozy, kind home when Rufus is nearly to the point of no longer believing in kindness, enveloping him into safety and a very charming found family. Archie goes on a crazy rescue mission when Rufus admits himself to a mental hospital, sacrificing himself for another family’s misplaced sense of honor, and this part of the book is pretty exciting as well as a great testament to the love that's developed between the characters.
There’s also a meaningful exploration of period homophobia, especially internalized homophobia, and the elements of shame and fear are explored well, I think. Somehow we’re still struggling with associations between queerness and “degeneracy” and pedophilia, and it’s painful to see the cruelty and judgment that the characters both fear and face in reality. On this note, though, the conclusion of the romance is a very happy one where they are able to be together surrounded by their loved ones. The only thing I don't like about the romance is the author’s bizarre habit of having them pause in the middle of intimate scenes to talk about archeology and make archeological plot-relevant discoveries…weird, yes, but if that’s my biggest problem, I think that’s a good sign overall.
In addition to exploring period homophobia, the book also addresses the stigma against veterans with shellshock after World War II. Before the diagnosis of PTSD, women with trauma most often had interpersonal trauma and would be diagnosed with hysteria, while men with trauma most often had combat trauma and would be diagnosed with shellshock (for a great documentation of this entire aspect of psychological history, I can’t recommend Judith Herman’s [b:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror|542700|Trauma and Recovery The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror|Judith Lewis Herman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348664543l/542700._SY75_.jpg|530025] enough). The diagnosis of shellshock was met with a great deal of stigma and contempt, an attitude that is voiced in this book by the brigadier, who dismisses Rufus’s suffering and amnesia as stemming from a lack of manliness and courage. As previously mentioned, Archie saves Rufus from undergoing electroshock therapy in order to try to help the brigadier restore his dead son’s “honor” from how his reputation is also currently being disparaged for his lack of honor and manliness during the war. I think Rufus’s trauma is written and explored well except for the fact that he happily states that he is entirely better at the end of the book - miraculous recoveries from complex mental health issues always frustrate me.
One interesting thing that differentiates this from some of the other m/m romances I’ve read is that there are a number of diverse female characters who are important to the story, and issues of sexism are relevant as well as issues of homophobia. We see everything from Rosemary’s precarious position after being widowed and losing her baby to Caroline talking about the invisibility of lesbians at the time to Alice Winborn struggling with grief and alcoholism and the expectation of getting married again. The book also touches on the plight of witches and the way that women’s societal roles began to change in England after World War II.
I have a couple of caveats to my appreciation for this part of the story. The magical realism plot is about an ancient, mystical Goddess cult whose female members are persecuted as witches, and that absolutely reeks of Margaret Murray. Her theory about the witch hunts actually being about destroying an ancient female-led fertility cult has been thoroughly discredited as absolute nonsense and yet it somehow persists to this day like some kind of history cockroach. Just as there is in Murray's witch-cult theory, there is an underlying theme of women’s instinctive, emotional knowledge vs men’s rationality and logic in this book. I can’t for the live of me find the quote in my Kindle copy now, but I recall a female character saying something almost along the lines of “men have logic and reason, and women have the underground.” I’m always annoyed by this particular line of cultural feminist thinking, and I remembered an Ursula Le Guin quote from an essay called "What Women Know" that explains my feelings quite well:
“But I didn’t like and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior - women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and on the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby walk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”
I should probably quit while I’m ahead before I start talking about Tehanu. Just from how long this review got, it should be clear that there’s quite a bit going on in this book beyond its very strong central romance plot. While not all of its elements worked for me, I would say that it is definitely worth checking out to see how everything works for you. It looks like Harper Fox has quite a substantial body of work, and I will definitely be returning to her books when I’m looking for another very gentle, very gay, and very British period romance.
CW: Homophobia, war violence, sexual assault, PTSD, alcoholism
So What’s It About?
It’s 1946, and the dust of World War Two has just begun to settle. When famous archaeologist Rufus Denby returns to London, his life and reputation are as devastated as the city around him.
He’s used to the most glamorous of excavations, but can’t turn down the offer of a job in rural Sussex. It’s a refuge, and the only means left to him of scraping a living. With nothing but his satchel and a mongrel dog he’s rescued from a bomb site, he sets out to investigate an ancient church in the sleepy village of Droyton Parva.
It’s an ordinary task, but Droyton is in the hands of a most extraordinary vicar. The Reverend Archie Thorne has tasted action too, as a motorcycle-riding army chaplain, and is struggling to readjust to the little world around him. He’s a lonely man, and Rufus’s arrival soon sparks off in him a lifetime of repressed desires.
Rufus is a combat case, amnesiac and shellshocked. As he and Archie begin to unfold the archaeological mystery of Droyton, their growing friendship makes Rufus believe he might one day recapture his lost memories of the war, and find his way back from the edge of insanity to love.
It’s summer on the South Downs, the air full of sunshine and enchantment. And Rufus and Archie’s seven summer nights have just begun…
What I Thought
When I look back at this book, I’m quite surprised by just how much there is to talk about, how much Fox managed to fit into what could have been a sweet, simple romance and still have been very effective.
The romance is at the heart of the book, and it is a very good romance. Rufus and Archie are both sympathetic characters and the way they fall in love is written in a lovely way. Unconventional vicar Archie welcomes a world-weary Rufus into his cozy, kind home when Rufus is nearly to the point of no longer believing in kindness, enveloping him into safety and a very charming found family. Archie goes on a crazy rescue mission when Rufus admits himself to a mental hospital, sacrificing himself for another family’s misplaced sense of honor, and this part of the book is pretty exciting as well as a great testament to the love that's developed between the characters.
There’s also a meaningful exploration of period homophobia, especially internalized homophobia, and the elements of shame and fear are explored well, I think. Somehow we’re still struggling with associations between queerness and “degeneracy” and pedophilia, and it’s painful to see the cruelty and judgment that the characters both fear and face in reality. On this note, though, the conclusion of the romance is a very happy one where they are able to be together surrounded by their loved ones. The only thing I don't like about the romance is the author’s bizarre habit of having them pause in the middle of intimate scenes to talk about archeology and make archeological plot-relevant discoveries…weird, yes, but if that’s my biggest problem, I think that’s a good sign overall.
In addition to exploring period homophobia, the book also addresses the stigma against veterans with shellshock after World War II. Before the diagnosis of PTSD, women with trauma most often had interpersonal trauma and would be diagnosed with hysteria, while men with trauma most often had combat trauma and would be diagnosed with shellshock (for a great documentation of this entire aspect of psychological history, I can’t recommend Judith Herman’s [b:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror|542700|Trauma and Recovery The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror|Judith Lewis Herman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348664543l/542700._SY75_.jpg|530025] enough). The diagnosis of shellshock was met with a great deal of stigma and contempt, an attitude that is voiced in this book by the brigadier, who dismisses Rufus’s suffering and amnesia as stemming from a lack of manliness and courage. As previously mentioned, Archie saves Rufus from undergoing electroshock therapy in order to try to help the brigadier restore his dead son’s “honor” from how his reputation is also currently being disparaged for his lack of honor and manliness during the war. I think Rufus’s trauma is written and explored well except for the fact that he happily states that he is entirely better at the end of the book - miraculous recoveries from complex mental health issues always frustrate me.
One interesting thing that differentiates this from some of the other m/m romances I’ve read is that there are a number of diverse female characters who are important to the story, and issues of sexism are relevant as well as issues of homophobia. We see everything from Rosemary’s precarious position after being widowed and losing her baby to Caroline talking about the invisibility of lesbians at the time to Alice Winborn struggling with grief and alcoholism and the expectation of getting married again. The book also touches on the plight of witches and the way that women’s societal roles began to change in England after World War II.
I have a couple of caveats to my appreciation for this part of the story. The magical realism plot is about an ancient, mystical Goddess cult whose female members are persecuted as witches, and that absolutely reeks of Margaret Murray. Her theory about the witch hunts actually being about destroying an ancient female-led fertility cult has been thoroughly discredited as absolute nonsense and yet it somehow persists to this day like some kind of history cockroach. Just as there is in Murray's witch-cult theory, there is an underlying theme of women’s instinctive, emotional knowledge vs men’s rationality and logic in this book. I can’t for the live of me find the quote in my Kindle copy now, but I recall a female character saying something almost along the lines of “men have logic and reason, and women have the underground.” I’m always annoyed by this particular line of cultural feminist thinking, and I remembered an Ursula Le Guin quote from an essay called "What Women Know" that explains my feelings quite well:
“But I didn’t like and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior - women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and on the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby walk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”
I should probably quit while I’m ahead before I start talking about Tehanu. Just from how long this review got, it should be clear that there’s quite a bit going on in this book beyond its very strong central romance plot. While not all of its elements worked for me, I would say that it is definitely worth checking out to see how everything works for you. It looks like Harper Fox has quite a substantial body of work, and I will definitely be returning to her books when I’m looking for another very gentle, very gay, and very British period romance.