Summer Light

Roxana Robinson has become one of my favorite authors. She writes with exquisite style and her characters are really believable. Her novels focus on families in crisis situations, usually as the result of divorces and second marriages. She writes especially well on the subject of children traumatized by divorce. In both this book and This Is My Daughter, this leads to a shocking ending. It's interesting to speculate what will happen to the characters here. The main character, Laura, does a lot of growing during this summer and learns to see things from others' point of view. This book is so well constructed, there are no unnecessary scenes or characters. The author is really gifted and I would highly recommend any of her novels.

Robinson is a fine writer, with a spare, edgy style, and tells a good story. Two sisters and their husbands, lovers, and children share the rental of a Maine beach cottage and get to know each other better...or worse. The main character, an aimless, about-to-be-divorced photographer with a small son, lives with and off her lover, a tense and unlikable lawyer. Her sister married the man she saw ---and fell in love with first--- when she was a teenager. The sisters' relationship is strained (do they really know each other?), but the end of the summer offers hope for a new understanding. The sister's husband is affable, but the main character's lover is problematic. He wants to marry her, and she seems to come around to accepting, but can it be anything but a mistake? Open-ended, almost-tragic climax resolves little of the tensions between the protagonists, though, and leaves the reader hanging and wondering what's next.

The novel has a premise that every reader can relate to, such as struggling relationships and internal struggles with shortcomings. The setting description is beautifully done and leaves one with a feeling of homesickness for places never visited before. The description of the New England coast is charming and absorbing