In a Summer Season (1961)

I discovered Taylor because of the Virago publications, and this is the second I have read from her. In this book, we spend time with a family that has reestablished a tentative calm after the death of the husband/father of the household. Kate, the widow, has fallen in love and remarried Dermot, an aimless man much younger than herself. Her son, Tom, surprised her by bonding with her new husband, and she isn't always happy about the outcome of their close relationship. Kate's daughter, on the other hand, is not pleased. Louisa resents her mother and Dermot; her mother for not acting her age and creating a scandal, and Dermot for taking her father's place. The family is rounded out by Aunt Ethel, their spinster aunt who lives on Kate's generosity.

The novel presents a complex insight into family and love. Despite all the fractures in the relationships amongst the members of this household, they are still people who care about each other. Kate is fully aware of Dermot's weaknesses, and yet she forgives him, and even acknowledges to herself that she would make the same decision to marry him all over again. Louisa truly cares for her mom, even if she is angry with her, and wants to be babied and wants to assert independence at the same time. Ethel is full of secret judgement and gossip, but always delivered with deference and true love for the family members she watches. She is aware of her position, a bit of a martyr, and yet rather sweet, too. Tom is probably the most distant, as he is obsessed with his own love tangles and doesn't care much about the antics of his family, on the surface; at the end of the novel, when a serious crisis occurs, his concern for his mother surfaces. In summation, these people love each other and spar together, have problems and yet are still united as a family.

The plot is not driven by action so much as it is by character development. Louisa is infatuated with a local priest. Kate and Dermot live for their love, but circle warily around issues that strain their relationship, such as their age difference, or Dermot's entrepreneur ideas that are supposed to earn money but always fail, or Dermot's mom who is pressuring Dermot to get a real job and accusing Kate of ruining him. Tom leaves his playboy ways when he falls hopelessly in love with Araminta. Araminta is a daughter of an old friend of the family, Charles Thornton. Kate was best friends with his wife, Dorothea, until she died. Charles and his daughter have been away since the death. Their return marks a transition point in the novel, emphasized by the novel's format, divided in two sections - the second part is called "The Return of the Thorntons". The first part sets up the dynamics of the family, and the second shows the strain and change that is ushered in by interactions with two new players in their world, Charles and Araminta.

Kate is drawn to Charles, because they are old friends, because he knew her husband, because she loved his wife. She is both refreshed and alarmed by the nostalgic memories he evokes. Dermot is alarmed, too. He is jealous of Charles, and resents their shared memories. Also, he is keenly aware of the discrepancy between him and Kate when Charles is around. Not just his age, but also his education and his cultural knowledge. Meanwhile, Tom is having his own life upheavals, as he falls in love with Araminta. For the first time, Tom is not the one in charge; Araminta is cool and distant, and even when she makes love to him, he still feels like he doesn't fully have her with him. Tom struggles, Louisa returns to school, and Kate and Dermot's relationship slowly deteriorates, while Ethel observes.

The characters are fantastic in this novel. Such complex people with flaws, all of whom I could relate to (well, by the end of the novel I was out of patience with Dermot and out of sympathy, too). Little action occurs, except for the crisis at the end of the book, but the story never drags because of the interactions between the characters and their evolution. The themes of love and change, of age, and of family are worked out with subtlety and beauty. I love the ending, despite the sorrow involved. Kate is a fantastic woman - not perfect, admittedly, but still fantastic - and I was pleased that a great part of the narrative revolved around her. Taylor is a craftsmith with words, painting beautiful images and developing dialogue that is real and pregnant with meaning. I enjoyed this book, it was a pleasant read that reminded me of sunny afternoons. I missed some of the tension that I found in the first book I read by her, A View of the Harbour, but still appreciated all of its charms. I am grateful to the Virago press for introducing me to this author, and look forward to perusing more of her work. ( )

It took me some pages to get into this one but I ended up loving it a great deal. With Taylor I frequently find that my favorite characters are not the lead characters but the secondary ones and with In A Summer Season this was no different. I really enjoyed the characters of Lou, Charles, Ethel, Edwina, & Father Blizzard. I even engaged with Tom whom I found to have so many underlying issues to think about as I read of him. But Kate was a bore and Dermot a juvenile idiot with no redeeming qualities. What a letdown he must have been after Kate's first husband.
The end of the book did not surprise me in the least as I had been waiting for it since the purchase of the new auto.
But I love how Ms. Taylor reveals the layers of her characters to us. And she takes her time with the storyline and lets it flow. I am looking forward to the September selection, The Soul of Kindness. I am loving reading one special author throughout the year and already looking forward to next year's author of choice. ( )

(04 Jan 1998, book stall in Greenwich Market)

An original green covered Virago book, although the cover doesn’t really fit the subject matter. I didn’t really take to this book at first. It ticks all the Taylor boxes – slightly wonky marriage of misfits, suburban, middle class concerns, interfering mother in law, odd relatives … but the central character, Kate, didn’t really seem to come alive for me too much. Then suddenly, half way through, it “took” and I loved it from then on. The teenage characters are beautifully done, as they so often are. In particular, Louisa, with her odd collections, styes and love for the curate, is a great character, thrown into relief by her relationship with Aunt Ethel, a kind of aunt that doesn’t seem to exist any more, living in the family home and taking such pains to be unobtrusive that she becomes yet more intrusive. Add to the mix Mrs Meacock, the housekeeper, with her American puddings and wearing task of compiling a book, and son, Tom, nose to the grindstone in his grandfather’s office, and all you need is the return of next door’s Charles and his beguiling daughter to throw everything topsy-turvy.

This book is more full of sex and death than you’d perhaps expect an Elizabeth Taylor novel to be, from the outset, when we meet widowed Kate and her younger, very attractive husband, Dermot. It’s an interesting book, very Taylorian indeed, with all her hallmarks, including sudden events told dispassionately and the usual milieu … interestingly, I was never that keen on the mid-period Iris Murdoch novel “An Unofficial Rose”, which has the same features of being an uber-Murdochian novel. Not sure what that says about me, though! ( )

The best gifts, they say, come in small packages. "In a Summer Season" seems a slight book for most of its length, but its subtle conflicts, frustrated hopes, and the internal journey of main character Kate’s heart – without warning these features take on a touching significance just at the end of the novel. Elizabeth Taylor (a different one) packs a powerful ending into this quiet book that one does not expect.

Kate and her family live in middle class comfort in Surrey, not too far from London, and the story takes place in the late 1950s. Kate had been widowed, but is remarried, to a man roughly ten years her junior. The bit of money they have between them allows a leisurely lifestyle: neither works, although Kate’s mother-in-law Edwina is forever trying to set up Kate’s husband Dermot in some kind of career. This push leads to the story’s main conflict; Dermot starts an apparently benign deception that nevertheless is a key factor in the wrenching events at novel’s end.

Ms. Taylor tells this story quietly: Kate’s frustrations are relieved rather promptly in most cases; her twenty-two-year-old son advances in the family business; her daughter gets over a crush on the curate. But the theme of the unity of this family emerges, and it seems to me that Dermot, and Araminta, the young siren of the neighborhood, are simply distractions, dazzling, diverting in their way, but only that. Dermot makes Kate happy, but the slow erosion of his confidence and self-esteem build up brilliantly to his ultimate failure. It’s a difficult, shadowy thing to see coming; Ms. Taylor does such a masterful job of surprising us with the climactic events.

"In a Summer Season" shows us our weaknesses, and shows how capricious our ideas of happiness are. We feel forces here that are quite beyond our control, and our emotional negligence contributes massively to our lack of control. This novel, gentle and lulling throughout its main course, surprises us with its sense of inevitability at the end, and teaches us to look with fresh eyes and appreciate our loved ones and our blessings, with hearts more open. It is a valiant, worthwhile effort.

The best gifts, they say, come in small packages. In a Summer Season seems a slight book for most of its length, but its subtle conflicts, frustrated hopes, and the internal journey of main character Kate’s heart – without warning these features take on a touching significance just at the end of the novel. Elizabeth Taylor (a different one) packs a powerful ending into this quiet book that one does not expect.

Kate and her family live in middle class comfort in Surrey, not too far from London, and the story takes place in the late 1950s. Kate had been widowed, but is remarried, to a man roughly ten years her junior. The bit of money they have between them allows a leisurely lifestyle: neither works, although Kate’s mother-in-law Edwina is forever trying to set up Kate’s husband Dermot in some kind of career. This push leads to the story’s main conflict; Dermot starts an apparently benign deception that nevertheless is a key factor in the wrenching events at novel’s end.

Ms. Taylor tells this story quietly: Kate’s frustrations are relieved rather promptly in most cases; her twenty-two-year-old son advances in the family business; her daughter gets over a crush on the curate. But the theme of the unity of this family emerges, and it seems to me that Dermot, and Araminta, the young siren of the neighborhood, are simply distractions, dazzling, diverting in their way, but only that. Dermot makes Kate happy, but the slow erosion of his confidence and self-esteem build up brilliantly to his ultimate failure. It’s a difficult, shadowy thing to see coming; Ms. Taylor does such a masterful job of surprising us with the climactic events.

In a Summer Season shows us our weaknesses, and shows how capricious our ideas of happiness are. We feel forces here that are quite beyond our control, and our emotional negligence contributes massively to our lack of control. This novel, gentle and lulling throughout its main course, surprises us with its sense of inevitability at the end, and teaches us to look with fresh eyes and appreciate our loved ones and our blessings, with hearts more open. It is a valiant, worthwhile effort.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2012/06/in-summer-season-by-elizabeth-taylor.... ( )

I loved this novel when I first read it, and I still love it now having re-read it for the Librarything readalong of Elizabeth Taylor, and the beginning of All Virago all August. I had remembered it very well though, so the ending (which I’ll say no more about) is much less dramatic when one knows what’s coming.
In Kate we have a typical Elizabeth Taylor character - one of the especially likeable ones who I imagine is very like Elizabeth Taylor was herself. Kate is a middle aged woman with two children Tom, a young man working for his grandfather, and Louisa who is still at school. Widowed from Alan, with whom she shared a love of Henry James, she then married Dermot ten years her junior. Dermot - hard drinking, given to sudden rages is suspected by some of having married Kate for her money – has no job. His mother Edwina – another marvellous character - is interfering in her attempts to find something for him to do. Sharing their home in the country is Aunt Ethel with her cello, and her dog. Ethel writes to her friend Gertrude long letters about the various domestic dramas, and contemplates what they refer to as the “physical side” – of Kate and Dermot’s relationship, which she obviously doesn’t quite approve of or understand. Home from school for the holidays Louisa develops an affection for the local curate, while her older brother plays fast and loose with Ignazia. Alongside the family is Mrs Meacock, who cooks American meals, and in her spare time compiles her anthology ‘Five thousand and one witty and humorous sayings’ I do love how Elizabeth Taylor invests such time and detail in her minor characters. They help to make her worlds complete and real.
The tension between characters builds slowly and perfectly, in this wonderfully domestic novel that has surprisingly sexual undertones. As the summer begins Kate prepares for the return of her best friend’s widower Charles and his daughter Araminta. Charles has never met Dermot, and Kate aware of Dermot’s deficiencies is nervous. Charles shares Kate’s love of Henry James’ novel The Spoils of Poynton, and there is a wonderfully excruciating scene where Charles makes reference to the novel in a private joke about someone and Dermot mistakes the name of a character of the novel for that of a real person. Araminta meanwhile is enormously changed from her time abroad, tall slender and beautiful she begins to drive poor Tom mad as she picks her way barefoot across the lawn her dress becoming soaked from the sprinkler. Like the title suggests, summer is ever present in this novel, the beginning of summer, the heat of the height of the season, windows open to let in the warm air, illicit seeming picnics, then as the season comes to a close preparing for the new school term. The climatic ending to this novel is perfectly balanced with the quiet tension that comes before it.
The people of Elizabeth Taylor novels are very English, they have tea at the proper time, and go to London to have their hair done, send their children away to school and have someone else cook the family dinner. Yet it is impossible not to understand them, their hopes, fears, and secret longings. Elizabeth Taylor understands her characters absolutely. ( )