The Summer Book

Charming and funny, but there is a subtle darkness and sadness underneath the surface. I read it exclusively on the beach (on Lake Huron and then Lake Erie) and the sunburn was worth it. Reminded me of Emily Carr's Klee Wyck, but with more appreciation for the child's perspective and imagination. I loved that Sophia is always shouting and screaming, so stubborn and selfish and single-minded, like a real kid.

—

“They went closer to the house and could feel how the island had changed. It was no longer wild. It had become lower, almost flat, and looked ordinary and embarrassed. The vegetation had not been disturbed; on the contrary, the owner had had broad catwalks built over the heather and the blueberry bushes. He had been very careful of the vegetation. The gray juniper bushes had not been cut down. But the island seemed flat all the same, because it should not have had a house. From up close, this way, the house was fairly low. On the elevations, it had probably been pretty. It would have been pretty anywhere, except here.”

—

Sophia dictates a study about worms to her grandmother (brought to mind when a couple of days later I read about the young Alison Bechdel dictating her diary to her mother in Are You My Mother?). After a worm stretches itself out and breaks apart:

“Both halves fell down on the ground, and the person with the hook went away. They couldn't grow back together, because they were terribly upset, and then, of course, they didn't stop to think, either. And they knew that by and by the'd grow out again, both of them. I think they looked at each other, and thought they looked awful, and then crawled away from each other as fast as they could. Then they started to think. They realized that from now on life would be quite different, but they didn't know how, that is, in what way. ....

“Presumably, everything that happened to them after that only seemed like half as much, but this was also sort of a relief, and then, too, nothing they did was their fault any more, somehow. They just blamed each other. Or else they'd say that after a thing like that, you just weren't yourself any more. there is one thing that makes it more complicated, and that is that there is such a big difference between the front end and the back end. A worm never goes backwards, and so for that reason, it has its head only at one end. But if God made angleworms so they can come apart and then grow out again, why, there must be some sort of secret nerve that leads out in the back end so that later on it can think. Otherwise it couldn't get along by itself. But the back end has a very tiny brain. It can probably remember its other half, which went first and made all the decisions. And so now ... the back end says, ‘Which way should I grow out? Should I go on following and never have to make any important decisions, or should I be the one who always knows best, until I come apart again? That would be exciting.' But maybe he's so used to being the tail that he just lets things go on the way they are.”