Lynn Kiele Bonasia

Picked this up expecting a light, diversionary novel, and found one with surprising depth in it. Don't let the cover picture of flipflops on a clothesline fool you. It'll still appeal to those who want a quick read, but it's not marshmallow creme fluff. There is an interesting parade of characters, starting with Rose, who, in the wake of a painful breakup, leaves her job as an expert in writing instructions and those annoying instruction manuals, and moves to Nauset on Cape Cod. There, she show more begins to pursue her dream of being a journalist, while getting to know the locals, including her landlady Val, a woman with a secret, neighbor Cooper, bitter and waspish, Noel, a young autistic man, with incredible art talent, and others as well. Every character in the novel has some peculiarity or flaw, but behind each flaw is a reason or a path for redemption. Add in Simon, Noel's alcoholic uncle, who reappears after being gone for 16 years, a mystery or two and other colorful locals, and Lynn Kiele Bonasia has served up a fine debut novel.

One particularly nice touch is that Noel, who has suffered great loss in his life as well as being autistic, speaks only in lasts -- last words of people, last statistics, last facts. Makes a bit of a mind teaser to try and decipher out what his message is behind his speech. I also liked that Bonasia started each chapter with a blurb from the instructions of something, and teasing out why that particular phrase was chosen. show less

Now this is a beach read. There's some tasteful boot-knocking, a beach, a somewhat less obvious mystery than that last one, and some highly sympathetic characters. There's no question that you should read this while sea-side. I mean c'mon, there are flip flops on the cover.

Published in July of 2008, it's the story of a heart-broken 39-year-old Rose Nowak who moves from Boston to Cape Cod to escape her cheating ex, her job as a manual-writer, and all the noise of the city. She rents a cottage show more from a less than perfectly sane local who, along with her neighbor, takes care of an autistic boy named Noel whose mother died when he was young, and whose uncle abandoned him for the inside of a bottle.

At one point in the book, in a hallucinatory state, a drunken God tells Noel's uncle that the gift he gave Noel was not his art (he's an austic savant, a painting genius), but his ability to bring people together. That's what the book is really about - Rose is just the facilitator. She writes the article about Noel that gets his uncle to come back. But it's Noel's painting that helps solve Nauset's biggest mystery and tears down emotional walls. Unlike Kelman's book, there's no overworking here. The juxtaposition of manual instructions with Noel's outbursts of "lasts" is both poignant and endearing, and Noel's perspicacity is very real - certainly the best rendering of autism I've seen in fiction.

This was Bonasia's first novel - she published another beachy Cape Cod novel last year, titled Summer Shift, and she has another novel coming out this week called Countess Nobody which seems like it would be less beachy, but entertaining.

Lauren Cartelli
www.theliterarygothamite.com show less

I had a lot of problems with this book. Mary is a hard character to like. She's mostly a bummer, with lots of real problems, but some of them seem to be self-inflicted. She's like a slightly-less- cranky, female version of Larry David, bumbling through life and causing trouble every time she opens her mouth. Throughout the book she lies frequently, for no apparent reason. It's just hard to buy her as the owner of a successful restaurant. There were many other characters, but few of them were show more well-developed enough to make any impression, including the supposed love interest. I kept forgetting who was who.

The setting was Cape Cod, but there was no sense of place. It was like the author knew Cape Cod was nice, but had never been there. (Contrast this with someone like Anne Rivers Siddons, whose descriptions are so intimate and vivid she makes you want to immediately sell everything and move to whatever location she is describing.) Finally, even though I just finished the book, I would be hard-pressed to summarize the plot. The story was thin and moved at very slow pace.

There were a few nice elements. The author probably DID work in a restaurant (although not one located in Cape Cod) because she nailed that dynamic, with her descriptions of the hectic pace, the customer complaints, the wait staff bickering with the cooks and everyone hooking up with each other, etc. I also really liked her relationship with the old man who lived in the house behind hers, and there was a nice twist there.

So to sum up, "Summer Shift" wasn't the worst book, but I couldn't enthusiastically recommend it to anyone. show less

I think i expected something more lighthearted than this was and that expectation colored my reading. I found it slow at the start, despite a quirky introduction. It took a while to learn enough about the characters to want to be involved in their story. I didn't really find Rose a sympathetic character.The characters are all a little odd, in a good way, but these quirks are treated very seriously, having mostly arisen from tragedy. The theme of loss permeates everyone and everything which show more was a bit wearing and probably accounted for the slow pace. The romance was bittersweet, you aren't sure if there will be a happy ending after the book. The msytery was solved neatly.I liked the instruction snippets and Noel's quirky "Lasts" but would have liked a little more levity.Not really a light, beach read. show less