Summer Reading

by Hilma Wolitzer

Book Overview

Can reading change your life? Following her acclaimed novel The Doctor's Daughter, award-winning author Hilma Wolitzer has now written a stirring tale about friendship, romance, inspiration, longing,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345485866
• ISBN13: 9780345485861
• Release Date: May 2007
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 251 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Beautiful Book

I'm astonished at some of the negative reviews of this beautiful book. I could not put it down, and I found the characterizations much more in-depth and intricate than some reviewers have stated. I'm wondering if the fact that there is lesbian content put some people off? If so, that's a shame because the book is a unique story of seemingly ordinary people who are not ordinary at all. Lissy, the beautiful young trophy wife, has had a hearbreaking childhood, losing the one person she truly loved, her nanny Eva, and carrying around her childhood guilt in her heart. She is dyslexic and feels stupid but she gamely tries hosting a book club--first to win the admiration of the town "superstar," wealthy Ardith, but also in her heart of hearts to try to improve herself. She is a lost soul with all the outward trappings of wealth and none of the happiness she wants. Michelle, who works in Lissy's kitchen, is a complicated character, defiantly blue collar and a hopeless marshmallow within. She loves her two labradors (finely drawn and wonderful for dog lovers like me) and her boyfriend--who may or may not love her back. She envies Lissy but wouldn't want to live her life, although she is not at all sure what kind of life she WOULD want to live. Angela is the most finely drawn character. Elderly and alone, she is the leader of the book group; an English professor with a long history of leading such groups. Lissy and the others see her as an uptight old prune, but Angela has had quite a life, almost in proportion to the novels she so cherishes. Her story is both tragic and uplifting, and she is a fascinating character. I highly recommend this book; it is complex and different, but well worth reading.

as light and deep as Mozart

Summer Reading is perfect summer reading. Yes, there are implausible coincidences, but it's all in keeping with a warm, funny symphony of women, each stumbling in her own way, toward a purposeful life. As is often the case with Wolitzer, each paragraph has something delicious in it. I was so glad NOT to be reading something by someone edgy and callow.

Should be a welcome addition to your beach bag

Lissy is a young stepmother who is having trouble with her "new" kids. In order to get in good with the social scene in her Hamptons neighborhood, she enlists Angela Graves, the local bookworm, to front a group of weekly readers called The Page Turners. Lissy employs a young woman named Michelle, a local, as her housekeeper. Michelle doesn't cotton to the summer people and is distressed by the lack of commitment she finds with her older fisherman boyfriend. Their summer travails, their search for love and commitment, and their attempts to ditch their never-perfect pasts make up the story of SUMMER READING, Hilma Wolitzer's latest novel. The women in this book all feel trapped by lives they have chosen, from which they cannot extricate themselves no matter how hard they try. Lissy loves her overworked husband Jeffrey (not to mention his money), but she isn't fond of his attachment to his ex and two young children. Although she tries to juggle their needs with her own, it's a fight she often loses. Her fascination with one wealthy denizen, her rich cuckold of a husband and the restauranteur with whom she is supposed to be having an affair turns dangerous when it inspires Lissy's own steps towards infidelity with a children's party clown (yes, I'm serious). Angela can't forget the man whose marriage she destroyed in an academic enclave in Texas so long ago. But when she spots the daughter of this union in New York City, she works hard to enter back into their lives, only to make some fetid discoveries. Michelle --- dog lover, housecleaner, oppressed daughter and sort-of stepmother --- wants Hank to marry her but finds, as time goes on, that maybe the perfect relationship she's always imagined isn't really within her grasp (perhaps because it doesn't exist?). Several fiction books, a murder and the deaths of a beloved dog and a former lover bring all these women to forks in the road --- but do any of them really change for the good with this knowledge? Wolitzer's breezy, smart tone is a joy to read, but somewhere I lost interest in Lissy's selfish needs and her inability to help others, Michelle's desire for the rank Hank --- a seemingly boorish guy who doesn't deserve her --- and Angela's need to dredge up the past in order to survive her lonely present. The author paints three-dimensional ladies with some very human desires and problems, but I was hoping for a little more surprise as their inner lives evolved. Nonetheless, SUMMER READING earns its title and should be a welcome addition to your beach bag. --- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

loved this book

What a wonderful book--so funny, smart, engaging, and fun, fun, fun throughout that the profound ending sneaks up on you. Somebody tell Wolitzer to write Autumn Reading.

Perfect Summer Reading! Perfect Women's Gift!

"Summer Reading" by Hilma Wolitzer delivers exactly that, and it does so perfectly! It is a delightful, intelligent, first-class reading experience. You don't often find a book that is at once, light, fun, and literary. But isn't that just what good summer reading should be? This book has just enough suspense and mystery to keep the reader wanting to find out what comes next. It never stops entertaining. There are literary tidbits, humor, and bookish insights throughout. Overall, the effect is to make you feel good about books, about life, and about yourself. "Summer Reading" is set in the present and weaves interlocking tales about three very different women during one summer in the Hamptons on Long Island. Each is brought together by a summer reading group--actually, more of a social club for summering New York high-society women. The group is hosted by a genuinely sweet, naïve, and totally clueless young trophy wife named Lissy. Poor Lissy happens to be dyslexic, adding spice and humor to the text. In an effort to make her new book club more legitimate, she hires Angela, a retired English professor as the book club leader. Angela is a woman who lives in her mind and through her books. She takes her job very seriously. She is confident that "literature teaches us how to live." She is eager to help the club members develop better insight into their lives through literature; however, she is not distracted when members take her literary insights as conversational springboards toward juicy local Hamptons' gossip. Michelle, Lissy's maid, accomplished all the work behind the scenes, work that transforms each club event into a smashing social success. She is disdainful of these women and hardly pays attention to them, but she can't help but observe and listen in on all the bookish happenings. Not surprisingly, over the course of the summer, it is Michelle who manages to learn the most from the book club experience. Wolitzer knows her literature, but don't expect bookish prose--this is effortless, clean, strong writing by a truly gifted writer. The characters and dialog are completely believable. The story moves along artfully, never getting tied down in unnecessary detail. And the books? Well, they turn up everywhere in the story, but it is not necessary to have read any of them to appreciate this tale. For the record, the reading list includes "Villette" by Bronte, "Mrs. Bridge" by Connell, "Madame Bovary" by Flaubert, "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Garcia Marquez, and "Can You Forgive Her?" by Trollope. Herrera's "Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo" and Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" also make brief appearances but are not on the official club's reading list. I am left with an overpowering desire to buy copies of this book as gifts for all the book-loving women in my life--serendipitously, I want to share the joy. My guess is that there are very few women--young, old, bookish, adventureous--that would not love to read th