Surface Tension: A Novel in Four Summers

So good, so good. Here I am on my summer vacation, travel through Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming... and I find this little gem, like it was meant to be read by the side of a lake or a swimming pool or by flashlight late at night as my family sleeps in our motel room. The book is Surface Tension by Brent Runyon (The Burn Journals), a Novel in Four Summers. Like a Same Time, Next Year for teen boys, Surface Tension perfectly captures the pivitol teen years of Luke, a young man who each summer goes away with his parents to their rundown lakeside cabin. Told in four chapters, one for each summer from age 13 to 16, this is a great concept that pays off with its lovely details of summers long past. Each year Luke's world gets darker and more complex as he yearns for the simplicity of his early years on the lake, at the same time diving head first into the unknown of the murky depths of life. Like a real life vacation, you wish it would go on forever but deep down, you know that all good things must come to an end. A perfect summer read.

Traditions are funny things. Sometimes we eagerly, even cynically, outgrow the traditions that shape our childhood memories --- putting out cookies for Santa, buying new unsharpened pencils for the first day of school --- only to have them become increasingly important over time, shaping the way we think about family life and time passing as adults. Traditions play a big part in Brent Runyon's novel, SURFACE TENSION. In a way, the book is all about tradition --- the tradition of Luke's family heading to their lake cabin for two weeks each summer. It's also about the small traditions that make up that annual pilgrimage, whether it's his dad buying his favorite peppermint stick ice cream, to the family noticing all the changes to the "neighborhood" from the previous year, to Luke charging into the lake for a first chilly swim even before unpacking his suitcase. When we first meet Luke, he is 13 and has been waiting for these blissful two weeks all year: "Here we are. We're back. It feels like it's been forever and no time at all." In typical early-adolescent fashion, only-child Luke alternates between complaining of boredom and, when it's finally time to go home, regretting that he hasn't had enough time to do everything he had hoped. By the next summer, Luke has discovered girls --- or at least discovered that he really likes staring at their chests, even if the girl he is attracted to (his neighbor's son's girlfriend) seems to see him as only a kid. He is also increasingly annoyed with his parents and their embarrassing habits, a tendency that only grows during the summer when he's 15, when he brings his best friend to the cabin with him. When Luke is 16, during the fourth summer profiled in the novel, girls have apparently discovered him back. This year he's apprehensive about the two weeks he'll be away from his girlfriend, who's at drama camp. Luke's vulnerable, romantic nature intersects with his increasingly wistful, nostalgic yearnings for his innocent outlook about the lake during his younger days. In this final segment, Runyon effectively captures the complex combination of desire for maturity and longing for a simpler, more innocent outlook on life that characterizes much of older adolescents' development. Luke recognizes changes in himself that he doesn't always like, even as his changing nature opens him up to new experiences. Each of the four summers profiled in SURFACE TENSION is like a short story, linked by virtue of character and place. What's remarkable is how Runyon captures character development just by looking in on a life for two weeks each year. In addition to effectively capturing specific crises of the various stages of adolescence, Runyon also realistically portrays a loving but challenging relationship between Luke and his parents. All of this happens against a memorable backdrop, a setting that will ring true to anyone who has ever had a favorite spot they've returned to periodically, witnessing both the persistenc