The Silk Road: A Novel [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Jane Summer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Three great things about naming your fictional hometown Hell: you can suggest so much about growing up in suburbia in the '60s; you can shamelessly use Dante for your epigram; and you can deliver wry, double-edged observations along the lines of "Children in Hell ... provide constant birdsong." Jane Summer's stylish debut has more going for it than this joke, but the puckish, observant sensibility behind the choice of the town name permeates this coming-of-age novel and accounts for its unusual appeal. The story itself--a determined girl's slow seduction of an older woman--may seem all too familiar to lesbian readers who endured the '70s or early '80s. In The Silk Road, high school sophomore Paige Bergman, blessed with good looks but cursed with eyeglasses, accepts a baby-sitting job with a strange family across town, the Gallaghers, only to discover that Mrs. Gallagher is the same woman Paige has been quietly obsessed with for the past year: the elegant driver of a Buick Skylark that is sometimes parked near Paige's house. Without the soft-focus nostalgia common to the genre, Summer's depiction of early love is skillfully written and achingly accurate. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
Paige Bergman, the first person narrator of Summer's richly textured but uneven debut novel, is an unhappy teenager who lives in Hell, a town in New York within commuting distance of New York City, in the late '60s. Paige hates her mother, finds high school, with the exception of her French class, irrelevant, despises her two friends and her boyfriend and obtains her one glimmer of hope from the presence of a mysterious, beautiful woman in a white Buick Skylark. (Cars play a major role in the novel, as lovingly described as Summer's human characters.) Paige's babysitting career leads her to the owner of the Skylark, which has metamorphosed into a red Barracuda: to say more would be to reveal all. It will be easy for many to identify with Paige's passion for unhappy homemaker Fiona Gallagher, and the sweetness of first love is evoked with a skill that crosses gender lines. In this story of girl-woman attraction, the woman is in no way a predator: Fiona emerges as a loving but troubled person who provides the dissatisfied girl with the only sunshine in her life. Paige herself is less satisfying: her vituperative hatred for a mother who seems no worse than average is disconcerting, and her general irritation with everything she sees is not endearing. In the first half of the narrative carelessness in grammar, tense, chronology and transitions get in the way of the story, giving the book the feel of a promising first draft. The writing becomes smoother in the second half, which is, unfortunately, marred by the conclusion, an awkward reminiscence by Paige's French teacher. Throughout, however, the novel is redeemed by sensuous language, spot-on period detail and tongue-in-cheek humor. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 232 pages
• Publisher: Alyson Books; 1st edition (May 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 155583549X
• ISBN-13: 978-1555835491
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,547,479 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Silk Road made me miss a dentist's appointment, August 7, 2000

By A Customer

Jane Summer has created vivid characters and atmosphere from the eyes of a teenage girl who has teenage worries, such as "Do I have pimple on my chin?" or "Why didn't I wash my hair today?" Very accurate and compelling. It kept me awake and reading for a few nights. It's a page turner. Alas, love scenes are a writer's trap, which is proved, unfortunately, in this amazing read. When I finally got to the long anticipated love scene, I felt cheated and turned off by metaphors such as, "she was like a snake, cool to touch. The skin on her face was as thin as sausage casing...her hip rose from her body the way the new Ford Mustang fender rises above the rear wheel...I, impundent dog, sniffed her, breathed in the smell of her toes...armpits...deep in that mound of...pubic hair lay an odor that brought my grandmother's kitchen to mind...Fiona was the smell...of potato bread...in grandmother's old-fashioned toaster" "We lay side by side, like lovers in a grave." How deadly! "Who wants to be compared to pickled herring?" Who, indeed?

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a book about the loves and evils of growing up, May 20, 2000

By	"funkypj" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This book takes you through a young girls tale and growing up and discovering herself. You see how easy it is to hate your family when you're young, and how it's even easier to adopt another one. The beginning is a bit hard to get through with lots of character development, but it's worth it to stick in there. As Paiges life unravels with the woman in the skylark, you start to remember and feel the naivety of being a teenager and the pure guilt and desire you experience when turing into a woman.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take me back, Barracuda, July 19, 2000

By A Customer

This coming of age trip for baby boomers is riveting, sexy without corn or porn. Straight, gay, bi or tri, you'll appreciate this love-of-my-life story. Summer captures the essense of adolescence without getting boring or trite. A plusses all around: Story, style, content. Hard to believe this is Summer's first, it surely won't be her last. You'll be thinking about this one for awhile. Bring back Paige & Fiona.