Customer Reviews

A Summer Place

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In the dead of winter, I looked through my book shelf, and found a copy of A SUMMER PLACE. The smash hit theme song from the movie version rolled through my head, lulling me into a comfy chair, a hot coffee, and an electric blanket, and in no time, I was immersed in this story of young love renewed and young love discovered. It's been years since I've seen the movie, and I can't say I even remember it, (Sandra Dee? Troy Donahue?), but I was surprised to find the summer place of the title a series of summer places, like a Floridian beach house, an aging Maine coastal inn, and even the sights and sounds of Buffalo, New York, (where I hail), and indeed, like Buffalo in winter, the summer place of the book is a place of the mind.

It's a complicated and dramatic love affair concerning two generations revolving around a historic summer inn on a Maine island. Two teenage camp counselors fall in love and eventually marry, while their male friend, a clumsy and disliked camp counselor, and the butt of all jokes and pranks, has to relinquish his lust for the spoken for girl, but not until he rapes her in a semi-consensual night on the beach. Years pass and the clumsy teen councelor is now a successful rich businessman, married with two young girls, and still harboring a desire for his old friend. He books a vacation at the inn one summer, knowing his childhood friends have bought and manage the old inn. When the son of couple number one meets the daughter of couple number two, the summer gets that much hotter.

Author Sloan Wilson creates convincing and sympathetic chacarcterizations, as the middle aged couples' mistakes and regrets, longings and desires, are brought full circle as the young affair blooms before them. In the teenagers in love, he clearly draws the insecurities and private worlds of young minds. Lovingly realized characters, a decent Romeo and Juliet plot, and a mature delving into the psyche of sexuality and commitment, make A SUMMER PLACE, a book well worth reading. Not to mention a summer breeze rolling in off the ocean in the dead of winter in Buffalo.

The writing is impressive and makes this book a perfect triumph of love.

Johnny is strong and unshakably devoted. And Molly, perfectly embodies the pixyish woman/child struggling to come to terms with adult emotions. Set to one of the most unforgettable themes ever, 'A Summer Place' was a huge success in 1958, and it has lost none of its appeal today ...

Ken is the hunk lifeguard to the rich and beautiful. Bart, Sylvia and their pampered friends call him The Beast. Sylvia is a beautiful Elizabeth Taylor look-alike who secretly loves the hunk. They have a brief affair, then Sylvia spurns him in favor of the rich dissolute Bart. They marry and have a girl, Molly, who falls in love with Ken's son, who had also married a person whom he neither loved nor respected. Sylvia's daughter and Ken's son fall in love, and marry.

That is the plot, except I've left out the interesting parts. It's a very engaging Gothic-type novel that is not as memorable as Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, but was quite a hit, made into a high-profile Hollywood movie, etc. Sloan Wilson is at his best talking about anything that floats: ships, boats, tugs, ice-breakers, schooners, yachts, ferries, what have you. He is also at his best talking about booze. Drinking to excess is the most common form of recreation, besides smoking endless numbers of cigarettes.

I found it hard to put this book down, and lost a couple nights sleep reading avidly. I recommend it heartily to those who like Gothic romance.

The parallel to Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is not likely to be coincidental. Ken is Heathcliffe, poor and rebuffed, but making his fortune and dominating the weakling rich alcoholic men who lorded over his younger years. Sylvia as Catherine, who made the mistake of spurning her poor lover and regretting it sorely. Her son is Catherine's daughter Catherine, and Ken's daughter Molly is Heathcliffe's son Hareton. Bart is the sickly, alcoholic Edgar, who marries Catherine and dies.

The difference between the two novels is also significant. Wuthering Heights is a study in the malignancy of vindictiveness. Heathcliffe's life revolves around getting revenge, in the course of which he ruins everyone around him, including his wife and child. His is a portrait in hate without respite. Ken, by contrast, it the fountain of good will and mental balance. The grief of Catherine and Heathcliffe are transformed into the warmth and love of Ken and Sylvia.

Wuthering Heights is perhaps the greatest novel in the English language. A Summer Place is a pleasant diversion. Happy endings are fun, mental health is reassuring, but the novels of greatness revel in the darker human emotions---hate, indifference, spite, vindictiveness, pettiness, and dusty death. I wonder why.

This book tells the story of two generations. Teenagers in the 1930's and their children as teens in the 1950's. There's rape, possible murder, teen pregnancy, boat wrecks: all the dramatic events that make a good melodrama, but underneath that there are great characters that are flawed but lovable. I was born in the late 80's and have no nostalgic ties to this book. It had me hooked from cover to cover.

I read A Summer Place years ago and absolutely loved it. Everytime I see that the movie is going to on television, my daughter and I watch it together. Even though she is three thousand miles away from me. We get on the phone and chit chat throughout the movie. So I decided to surprise her and purchased the book for her to read. I know it will become one of her favorite books like it has become one of mine.

"A Summer Place" is surprisingly well written soap opera. Teenage kids confusing sex with love get married, have kids, get divorced because they realize they secretly loved someone else when they were teenagers, marry the right person this time, and, surprise!, the kids from their first marriage fall in love with each other and have the same problems their parents did. <whew!>

What makes it all work somehow is the author's compassion for the characters. He does a wonderful job detailing emotions such as loneliness. However it all would have worked better if he had fewer characters to work with and story which didn't border on the farcical.

Bottom line: a fine author dishes out a weepy. Refined "chick lit"?