My Summer with George

by Marilyn French

Book Overview

In this new novel by the author of The Women's Room and Her Mother's Daughter, a hugely successful, middle-aged writer of romance novels encounters the possibility of romantic love in her own life. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345409655
• ISBN13: 9780345409652
• Release Date: July 1997
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 243 Pages
• Weight: 2.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Sadness

I borrowed this book from the library because I was looking for a book about someone like me, a mid-fifties woman. In so many ways I am not like her. I am not rich. I don't write romances. I don't have any friends. But I cried at the end. It's true. No one is ever going to love me again. This book tells me to just accept that fact. No wonder it's not a popular book. It's not a romance.

My Summer With George

Marilyn French has captured a reality that so many women feel but would never admit. If women can't relate to Hermione, it's because they're still young with all their options intact. I personally know three woman whose names could easily be inserted into this story as Hermione. Sure, nowadays we're all liberated and free and smart and have self-respect and money and all that stuff, but the need for love and the guaranteed loneliness that sometimes haunts us, especially when the options are narrowing, are a reality. There are things that never change in the human soul. Why Hermione was attracted to George (and her subsequent flight of fancy) is one of them. These things never change regardless of our disdain or dislike for them. And Marilyn French has written about it like no other writer has dared.

One of the best books I've read these past years.

It has been a great pleasure reading Ms.French's latest novel. The heroine's infatuation with George, the elusive "boyfriend" is narrated in such a fashion that one cannot help but feel all the frustrations Hermione goes through. Any woman over 40 will, I am sure, find this novel very uplifting all the same. I think it is a must read for French fans.

A Non-Romance Novel Examines Romance

"My Summer with George" is an ironic title for Marilyn French's latest novel in which Hermione Beldame does not spend the summer with George other than in her mind and conversation. George does come in and out of Hermione's life in New York City, but the novel is more about romantic love and its effects on sophisticated women than it is about actual romance. Hermione herself, a successful, spirited, sixty-something romance novelist, and the women in her life are as much or more interesting than George. They thoroughly discuss the role of romance in their lives. "My Summer with George" is actually a non-romance novel that examines how one woman is surprised by her longing for romance and relationship and lives more through the fantasy than the meager reality of it.