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Summer Light is the story of a young woman hovering between careers, between marriages, between lives – and of the summer that throws her off balance and onto her feet. Laura is in her middle thirties, separated but not yet divorced from her philandering husband; she is spending the summer on the Maine coast with Ward, the man she lives with; Sam, her three-year-old son; her sister, Sarah, Sarah’s husband, Richie, and their two adolescent daughters. It was supposed to be a tranquil family summer, full of berry picking, sailing, days spent in the sun and evenings before the fire – but it doesn’t turn out quite that way.
“Roxana Robinson’s beguiling story is rich with the lessons we all should have learned from Henry James and Edith Wharton. A real human drama is measured out in simple moments: it’s as quiet as an intercepted glance at the breakfast table, the creak of a bedroom door.”
- Susan Cheever
“A lovely novel – so full of pleasures and surprises. Its surface is as deceptively simple as the Maine coast in the summer. But it is about the emotional essentials of growing up; it’s about deep waters and hard choices. It is the sensibility that supplies the pleasures.”
-Frances FitzGerald
(Viking, 1987; HarperPerennial, 1991; Hardscrabble Books, University Press of New England, 1995)
From: Publishers Weekly:
“The satisfactions of Robinson's first novel are many: her fluid prose and graceful construction; her sure sense of character and place; her skill in depicting the texture of daily life as well as the turning points in relationships; and her sympathetic understanding of the stresses within a family. Laura is almost 30, and "treading water." Not quite divorced from her chronically unfaithful, immature husband Nat, she is living with but unable to commit to her lover Ward, terrified of failing her four-year-old son Sam, and equally afraid of being a failure as a photographer. Laura, Ward and Sam are spending the summer in Northeast Harbour, Maine, sharing a house with her sister Sarah and brother-in-law Richie (Laura's first love) and their two adolescent daughters. Long since convinced that she is "worthless," a consequence of her rebellion against her stern, moralizing Quaker parents, Laura makes excuses for her inability to decide her future. When she allows Nat to fly up one weekend to see Sam, she unwittingly precipitates a crisis in her relationship with Ward, but her anguish leads to insights and she finally sees her own behavior patterns clearly and begins to free herself from crippling inertia. In compact but elegant prose that conveys the essence of somnolent summer days by the sea, Robinson moves her narrative to a moment of near-tragedy, in which Laura's tentative choices become luminously clear. This book should plant Robinson squarely on the literary map.”
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From: Library Journal:
“Dramatic, fast-paced, boasting both engaging characters and an optimistic resolution of its conflict, this well-written novel will make good summer reading. It explores contemporary family life and relationships on a number of levels as its protagonist, Laura, seeks to come to terms with her roles as woman, mother, sister, aunt, daughter, wife, and lover. On vacation in Maine with her small son, her lover, and her sister's family, and contending with a visit from her estranged husband, Laura is forced to evaluate these various, often-conflicting roles. Though the novel is undemanding, and its solutions seem glib and easy, the pleasant style and the author's control of her subject recommend it.”
Elizabeth Guiney Sandvick, North Hennepin Community Coll., Minneapolis
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.