The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner
What's It About?
When I saw the description for Jennifer Weiner’s The Summer Place (Atria), my eyes zeroed in on the word “pandemic,” and I thought, I was trying to avoid this. I wasn’t sure that my fragile psyche could handle reading about families struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, no matter how fictional those families were.When I saw the description for Jennifer Weiner’s The Summer Place (Atria), my eyes zeroed in on the word “pandemic,” and I thought, I was trying to avoid this. I wasn’t sure that my fragile psyche could handle reading about families struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic, no matter how fictional those families were.
Thankfully, the pandemic is not the villain of this story, even though it’s the villain in most of our eyes. It’s more like a catalyst, disrupting lives and forcing people together just enough to put their world views into relief, bring a different perspective to their lives, and in the case of these characters, highlight what they need to fix.
PANDEMIC FRAMES THE STORY, BUT ISN’T ITS SUBJECT
The present-day plot of The Summer Place begins in 2021 after the general public was able to get vaccinated, but COVID still had a fierce grip on the population. This multiple POV story is told mostly through the lens of Sarah Weinberg Danhauser — daughter, mother, stepmother, wife and, most recently, a soon-to-be mother-in-law. When we first meet her, she’s learning that her stepdaughter Ruby and Ruby’s boyfriend, Gabe, are engaged, and they want to have their wedding at Sarah’s mother’s house in Cape Cod. This engagement — probably spurred on by the fact that Gabe quarantined with Ruby and the Danhauser family — not only seems ill-timed but it feels like a portent. It dredges up long-buried negative emotions and forces to the surface old secrets for Sarah, her husband Eli (Ruby’s father), Sarah’s brother Sam, Rosa (Gabe’s mother), and Sarah’s mother, Ronnie.
The story explores much of these characters’ lives through flashbacks — with events happening years and, for some, decades before the pandemic. The conflicts unfolding in the present timeline are directly linked to what’s happened in the past, which Weiner reveals layer by layer through each character’s point of view. This storytelling style is similar to Weiner’s two previous novels in this series, Big Summer and That Summer. While some might find the novel slow-moving, I liked this approach. It brings an element of mystery to this character-driven, women’s fiction novel that wouldn’t have otherwise been there.
THE SHARED UNIVERSE OF WEINER’S SUMMER STANDALONES
Though Big Summer, That Summer and The Summer Place are standalone novels, all exist within the same Cape Cod world that Weiner has created, and story elements of one book seep into the others. This aspect made me want to re-read all the books; the richness of each of the stories made me feel like I was stepping into this complex, beautiful world. The interconnectedness of these novels makes their stories feel very serial and immerses readers further into these characters’ lives, as do Weiner’s vivid descriptions. Readers will enjoy this author’s approach to writing backstory, the way she “paints” a picture of a character’s world, adding more weight to the bind they’re currently in as the events of the story cause lives to collide.
By Part Three of the novel, readers are pretty sure where the characters stand as they all convene at Ronnie’s house for the wedding. This is when the action of the present-day plot takes you on that wild ride Weiner’s characters do so well, which keeps you reading — and guessing — to the end of the epilogue. Part Three is also where the author gets the most personal. Readers who have been following Weiner on social media in recent months will recognize a lot of her personal life infused within the poignant end to this rich, layered narrative.
Though your first intention may be to skip any novels that have the words “COVID pandemic” in the description, don’t skip this one. The Summer Place is an engaging and rich read that will only add to the guaranteed good vibes of your first beach vacation since quarantine.
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Nice review, Yvonne!