I'm not sure why this got mediocre reviews on Amazon...I enjoyed it. It's a tale of class, not too heavy-handed, with Lissy (a silly but well-intentioned, wealthy and insecure wife) juxtaposed against Michelle (a lower-middle-class girl who helps in her kitchen). Also featured is Angela Graves, an older bisexual woman, who leads Lissy's "summer reading" group. I liked the three different perspectives afforded by these characters, and also how the characters and plot echoed the books they were reading. ( )

I was a little suspicious of Hilma Wolitzer’s novel Summer Reading when I first read the plot summary. A book about a group of women getting together to read books, and how that activity affected their lives outside the group, sounded an awful lot like The Jane Austen Book Club. And while I enjoyed that earlier work, I wasn’t eager to read a carbon copy. So when I put Wolitzer’s book on my reading list for this past summer, I had some misgivings. But I needn’t have worried. Summer Reading definitely is not a copy of anything. Wolitzer’s novel is original and very readable, with well-developed characters, a lot of humor, and a few surprises thrown in along the way.

Basically, it’s the story of three very different women – how they interact, and how reading (or not reading, at times) affects their lives. Lissy Snyder, the wealthy “trophy wife” of a Wall Street type, is the originator of a reading group (called the Page Turners) that meets twice a month at her summer place in the Hamptons. Michelle Cutty, Lissy’s hired help, is younger than Lissy and a permanent resident of the beach community – as opposed to the “summer people” who invade the place during the tourist season. And Angela Graves, a retired English professor who lives in a tiny book-filled cottage by the sea, has been engaged by Lissy to lead the discussion at the group’s meetings.

Angela guides the Page Turners through five books in the course of the novel: Can You Forgive Her? by Anthony Trollope, Villette by Charlotte Brontë, Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell, and Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez. And these works, each in its own way an exploration of male-female relationships, cause each woman to reexamine how her own past actions and decisions have shaped her life.

All of the characters, even the minor ones, were intriguing. But I think my favorite was Angela. I’m always looking for books with interesting older women in leading roles – they’re not easy to find. I liked her because she was a book lover, and something of a loner. And the back story of her affair with a married colleague – an interlude from many years ago that has shaped the whole of her life since then – was touching and sad and also a little exasperating. She just seemed very human.

The only quibble I have with the book (and it’s really a minor one) is the slightly surprising ending to Lissy’s story. It involves a coincidence of fairly epic proportions (well, epic to Lissy, anyway), and isn’t quite as believable as the rest of the book. But it does provide a very satisfying, if not terribly realistic wrap-up to an otherwise entirely appealing read. ( )

When Lissy Snyder decides to host "The Page Turners" book club at her Hamptons home, Angela Graves, a retired English professor with a long past, is engaged to help lead the discussions. As the group meets, Lissy's housekeeper, local woman Michelle Cutty, eavesdrops and eventually turns to one of the books herself. All three women are more than they seem. An intriguing book due to its dichotomies. At once languid and exhilirating, engrossing and appalling. Recommended. ( )

The lives of three women, a young wealthy newlywed, a retired English professor and a house cleaner are loosely tied by a summer book club in the Hamptons. The question presented is "can the act of reading change you life?" While the lives changed in the book, the tie didn't really seem to be to the reading. ( )

Good, serviceable writing; not as good as the Doctor's Daughter or even the Reading Group which it reminded me of. About the back stories of members of a reading group, as well as the servant of one of them. I wish the back stories had been just slightly more interesting, and (as I felt with the Reading Group) that the books had been woven more into the story. ( )