My Summer of Love [Paperback]

Helen Cross (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2004

It's 1984 and one of the hottest summers Yorkshire's seen. It's the kind of woozy heat you lose your mind in. Mona is 15 years old. She's a drinker, a thief, and a fruit machine addict. Things are already going badly in the pub where she lives with her obese step-brother PorkChop, but when Mona meets posh Tamsin Fakenham, a sassy girl with beautiful breasts, an actress mother, and a sister who's died of starvation, things very quickly get much worse. Winner of the Betty Trask Award 2002, this novel was made into a 2005 film starring Emily Blunt and Nathalie Press.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A hand grenade of a novel." -- Daily Mail

"A sharp, disturbing and highly original debut novel." -- Sunday Mirror

"Dark, intelligent and superbly written. Prepare to be seduced... and shocked." -- Glamour

"Energetic and blackly comic." -- The Times

“A savvy, comic/gothic debut exploring the angry mania of teenage alienation.” -- Kirkus Reviews

“Scabrous and cleverly evocative of the confusion of emergent adulthood, Cross's blistering prose lifts a familiar storyline to another level.” -- Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

It's 1984 and one of the hottest summers Yorkshire's seen. It's the kind of woozy heat to lose your mind in...

Mona is fifteen years old. She's a drinker, a thief and a fruit machine addict. Things are already going badly in the pub where she lives with her obese step-brother PorkChop. But when Mona meets posh Tamsin Fakenham, a sassy girl with beautiful breasts, an actress mother and a sister who's died of starvation, things very quickly get much worse...

Winner of the Betty Trask Award 2002. "The Last Resort," the 2004 film of the novel directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, won the 2004 BAFTA (British Oscar) for Best British Film.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 248 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury UK (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747575886
• ISBN-13: 978-0747575887
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,191,970 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Flawed to good coming of age story - comparing the book & the movie, July 25, 2005

By 

S. Maruta (Bristol, England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Summer of Love (Paperback)

In a bizarre twist I read a raving review about the movie made by Pawel Pawlikovski based on this novel, read the novel and finally watched the movie. It's quite unusual but I would say that having watched the film made me downgrade the book from 4 to 3 stars.

To begin with the good bits, Helen Cross's strory of Mona, a 15 yo girl in the adolescent turmoil equivalent of the perfect storm (her mom's just died, her sister's turned into a smugg adult, and the whole world is about to crumble and burn - it's 1984, the miners are striking, Yorkshire is impossibly hot, a local girl's gone missing, possibly victim to some predator with an eye for lost teenagers...) is quirky but compelling, it has the energy and sometimes the imperfection of youthful writing.

When she meets Tamsin, she finds a soulmate who has similarly been burnt by life but brings that radical class difference - the carelessness of those who have a very good parachute when they jump in the tumuly of life - that will act like a catalyst for her own addictions, to alocohol, gamble, danger and ultimately violence.

The really interesting part of the story is that of the deceitful relationship between Mona and Tamsin, this incandescent friendship/love/lie fueled by booze and loud disco music. The book is particularly good at describing the frantic efforts of Mona to keep Tam entertained and the great exhaustion that comes from living in a state of neverending excitation.

THe gory ending on the other hand is not very satisfying, which is why I was impressed by the movie adaptation, that captured the adolescent passion of the book without yielding to the equally adolescent temptation to end the story in a carnage. Teenagers play with death, but most will stop short of doing anything irredeemable, the fright of it all will have been enough to make them grow. The movie and the book thus offer two alternative visions of a similar story, the movie version where violence is contained and the threats of the outside worlds are stylised being the more arresting of the 2.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not like the film, January 24, 2010

By 

RealGrrl (Tulsa, OK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Summer of Love (Paperback)

Mona is a young teenage girl living in Yorkshire finding herself rather lonely & bored with her existence. Her mother has passed away from cancer, her sister has just married & had children, leaving her all alone to wonder what her role as a woman should be. She finds more comfort in looking after animals, to show that she doesn't care about people, but it's rather obvious that she's dying to have a friend. What turns her life around is when she's asked to befriend a girl who has recently got out of boarding school, for what's hinted as general difficulty in making friends or getting along with others. Tamsin doesn't seem like she'd have any difficulty considering she's wealthy, goodlooking, & confident. Mona being a working class girl with self-esteem issues latches on to Tamsin & revels in her upper middleclass privleges. But all isn't well with Tamsin who lost her sister, Sadie, to anorexia. They bond with each other over their grief. Soon,they take it upon themselves to move in with each other while Tamsin's parents are split up & develop an unhealthy relationship with each other, though neither is completely devoted & are both left wondering at times if it's all an act. Are they just acting out how they were treated by other women? Are they really in love with each other? Is it a rejection of the roles society & family have given them?

Cross really hammers home a lot of the frustration young girls have to deal with since they both lack female figures in their lives, neither girl is fully able to understand what a proper woman should be. All they have left is pop culture & women they despise on a personal level to emulate & imitate. They learn that it's dangerous to be a woman, because her appearance could attract the wrong kind of attention or even cause her to be unloved. Both girls on multiple occasions talk about what makes their appearances good or bad and make comments that lead us to believe they do not understand what a healthy attraction to women should be (confusing exploitation with adoration), & are jealous of their older sisters. In the background, there is an ominous feel to the story. A girl is missing & Mona assumes her to be dead & frequently imagines her body lying at the bottom of a lake.

For one summer, both Mona & Tamsin decide to live life by their own rules, disregarding what harm it causes to those around them or anybody who comes within their path. Cross's work is a magnificent representation of the effects of class differences, exploitation of women, & cruelty of young girls. It's a tough read for the first thirty pages, but afterwards the story builds & you'll keep turning the pages.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lesbian Teen Killers ?, January 9, 2011

By 

laszlo - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: My Summer of Love (Paperback)

I wanted to read this after seeing the film last summer in NYC,but the book was so much more violent and the characters were hardly sympathetic.I found the Hungarian edition first (Ulpius-ház) and thought maybe it was the translation,but then realized that the British edition (Bloomsbury) was very similar.The funny (bad) translations were cultural difference mostly.The step-brother Pork Chop was called Tripe in the Hungarian version , for example.

Although I enjoyed the book and think she is a good writer,I must say that very few of the characters were likeable.Or was that point ?