Summer's House: A Novel

By Eric Gabriel Lehman

Book Overview

In Eric Gabriel Lehman's luminous and compelling novel, Summer's House , three characters who each inhabit a very different aspect of New York City each find themselves searching for a place where they truly belong. Raymond, an overly cerebral seventeen-year-old, has decided it's time for him to fall in love yet struggles with his own desires. Jerome is an unrecognized poet obsessed with the woman who threw him out when he uncovered her past. Raymond's Uncle Lester, an uncomfortable suburbanite, is tormented by his failing business and his wife's obscene caller. One hot summer in the 1970's, their lives intersect, collide, pull apart and irreversibly change.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312277075
• ISBN13: 9780312277079
• Release Date: December 2001
• Publisher: Stonewall Inn Editions
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.4" x 1.0" x 5.4"

Customer Reviews

A rich, rewarding story

There are few novels that capture the breadth of New York City in the late 70s quite like this one - from the anarchic artists and squatters in Soho to the blue-collar neighborhoods of the Bronx. And I can think of few novels that are able to encompass and express the inner lives of such a diverse group of people. There's an exquisite ability at work here that manages to give voice to the unspoken dynamics of family life. As I read this book I felt like these were people I knew, people I grew up with. And for all the reality of the people, there's a poetry to the writing that managed to lift these daily, desperate lives to the heroic - and the tragicomic. Narrated by three different voices, three characters in the novel, (four if you count entries in a stolen journal that's essential to the plot) the reader has a fully three dimensional view of all the characters. But this view progresses in stages, so that it has all the mystery and beauty of a deepening relationship. Sometimes you learn things you don't like, but you're hooked. These people pull you into their story of love sought and confused sexuality, of social climbing and marital infidelity. This is a rich reading experience I would recommend to anyone who looks both depth of feeling and a good story.

Moving and rewarding

Summer's House is a wonderful novel that engages the reader from the first mysterious page. The three leading characters are all intriguing and complex people that you care about and understand. The language is poetic and evocative, with many monents that stop you in your tracks to let the richness and vividness sink in. There are several mysteries that unfold throughout the book and the clues are woven into a plot that pulls you along. The intensity of the character's plights at times becomes almost palpable through the writer's style and pacing. All through the novel there is a thread of sexuality which is tenderly and convincingly portrayed-whether it is a young man's stumbling forays into the world of adult sex or the sad attempt of an older man to find love and redemption in an affair. If you like multli-generational family stories (with a Jewish backdrop) movingly told, with beautiful prose, you'll love Summer's House.