Review: The Book of Summers

Title: The Book of Summers

Author: Emylia Hall

Publisher: Headline Review (UK)

When Beth Lowe's father arrives on her doorstep with a package postmarked Hungary, she doesn't want to open it. It's the country where her Hungarian mother abandoned her and her English father when Beth - then known as Erszi - was nine years old. It's the country she returned to summer after summer for seven years, until she was 16. She hasn't been back since, hasn't allowed herself even to think about it.

But when she opens the parcel, and finds The Book of Summers, Beth can't help but remember. Each holiday lovingly documented by her elusive mother, glorious and bittersweet, comes tumbling back - right up until the moment it all ended and the lies came tumbling down.

I flew through The Book of Summers. It might be a debut novel, but the writing is lyrical and confident, the voice vivid. It's a coming-of-age tale that sits alongside When God Was A Rabbit on my mental bookshelf, though the subject matter is very different.

The subject of a broken family is going to strike a chord with many readers; even as someone whose parents are happily married, I still found myself having a very visceral reaction to the notion of a woman who chooses the country of her childhood over her family. Reading, I felt very hostile towards Marika, and to a certain extent Beth/Erszi as well for the crime of feeling more sympathy for her mother than her father. I don't know if that's the reaction Emylia Hall wanted me to have, but as the novel reached its climax I think it added something to my experience. Obviously I don't want to spoil it for anyone else, but the stroppy teenager in me certainly felt a sense of satisfaction about how things play out; a nice payoff for my earlier frustration with Erszi.

What is essentially a series of vignettes, linked together by scenes of the adult Beth leafing through the scrapbook, combine to create an impression almost as vivid as the pictures Marika's artist partner Zoltan paints. It's easy to forget that each of the summers is only a week or two long. Whether it's the fleeting meetings over the years with neighbouring farmer's son Tamas, or mother-daughter moments with Marika, each grows heavy under the weight of significance when Erszi tries to live every defining moment of her life within that brief period before returning to adolescent hibernation in Devon. I wanted to slap her sometimes, but you can't help envying those moments either. Definitely a recommended read for a sunny afternoon (that Hungarian weather? Very much one of my envy moments).

The only thing I don't like, to be honest, is that tagline. Partly to a dislike of sentences beginning with 'And' that aren't being used in an ironic manner, but mostly because I feel it's misleading. Something more subtle would have been more appropriate, in keeping with the prose and that gorgeous cover. 

I apologise to the designer for my poor photography, as I don't do it justice.