LIFE WITHOUT SUMMER
Lynne Griffin
St. Martin’s Press
Fiction
ISBN: 9780312383886
Lynne Griffin hooks her readers on page one of LIFE WITHOUT SUMMER, drawing them into the powerful point of view of Tessa Gray, just days after she has experienced every parent’s worst nightmare: the death of her four-year-old daughter, Abby, in a hit-and-run accident outside the little girl’s preschool. When we first meet Tessa, she’s a wreck, turning away from her differently grieving husband, rejecting the well-meaning advances of family and friends.
At last, Tessa is convinced by her husband to start seeing a therapist, Celia Reed. Celia is the one who assigns Tessa to write the journal that forms part of the novel’s narrative. Just as we feel we’re getting to know Tessa, however, we also get to know Celia through the pages of her own journal.
Celia is a competent, caring therapist, but she’s also a mother; occasionally, she has a difficult time maintaining professional distance from Tessa’s situation. Celia has recently remarried after years of being married to an alcoholic. Her 15-year-old son, Ian, seems most affected by the change in his family circumstances, disappearing for hours to his room, failing to complete his homework, and skipping school. Ian and his stepfather are constantly at odds with one another, and Celia finds herself questioning how, or why, she came to this place in her life, even as she works to help Tessa come to terms with her own family crises.
Tessa is convinced that if only her daughter’s case was handled by more competent police detectives, she would finally have the one answer she’s been craving: the name of the person who killed her daughter. Even though Celia cautions that this kind of closure seldom results in real healing, Tessa is on a mission to find answers. Little does she know that the answers she seeks will reveal new, unexpected connections to her therapist, whose family history is at least as tumultuous as Tessa’s own.
LIFE WITHOUT SUMMER is Lynne Griffin’s first novel, and one of its greatest strengths is its author’s understanding of and commitment to family life. Griffin is a well-regarded expert on family issues, and she brings this thoughtfulness to bear on her book as well. In heart-wrenching journal entries from both women’s points of view, she probes into the thoughts --- sometimes ugly, sometimes redemptive --- that compel both Celia and Tessa.
Perhaps because she has had so much real-life exposure to families in crisis, Griffin largely avoids the kinds of clichés that often mar books about loss: Tessa and her husband actually grow stronger as a couple over time, Celia finds ways to forgive her alcoholic ex. At times, Griffin’s prose can be a bit awkward, and although most of her characters are compelling and three-dimensional, Celia’s second husband becomes a bit of a caricature of the pompous academic. Nevertheless, if Griffin is able to delve into family issues and women’s lives with such fearless insight, readers will be demanding more from this new perspective in fiction.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
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