Summer Sisters

My third time reading this one, it’s a favorite, though it probably isn’t for everyone.

The frank sexual content is one of the areas where this might lose some readers. I’m fine with the adults and older teen scenes, it’s the sexual content in relation to kids under fifteen, particularly a bathtub scene where it does sometimes feel like a bit much yet at the same time you can’t help but think that it’s realistic, too, to portray kids’ thoughts, experiences, and curiosity about sex and their bodies.

Caitlin is another area that may lead some to DNF this one. While family and romance play a part, the central relationship is Vix and Caitlin’s friendship, it’s definitely on the toxic side of things which often doesn’t show more work for me, but there’s something so compelling and page-turning about the messiness of their bond/addiction to each other. I’d give anything to read Caitlin’s POV (we hear from everyone in the book except for her), to know for certain what was going on in her head and her heart, still, the more times I’ve read this book and the more widely discussed mental health has become, the more I empathize with her, on the surface Caitlin is pretty easy to hate but Judy Blume isn’t just a surface kind of writer, there are hints of Caitlin’s vulnerability and her fragility that doesn’t excuse her behavior but does allow you to occasionally feel for her.

I’m forever undecided on what impresses me most about this book, the emotional truth in it or the scope of it, from middle-school and care-free summers to college and careers. It’s amazing how much ground is covered without an overwhelming page count, without ever feeling like you’ve missed something crucial or been shortchanged in any way and how it gives a sense of each decade it’s in without extraneous research bogging down the momentum, there’s an instinct here for the right details rather than all the details that I thoroughly appreciate and admire. show less

I remember getting this through Book of the Month Club when I was a teenager. I had that hardcover for years, I have no idea where it's disappeared to now. I read it many times and spent many hours with Vix and Caitlin, but it's been a long time since I visited their story. The little details of books, the things that really make it special, those are the memories lost to time, the sections with different POVs, their 12-year-old curiosity, the joy of their summers, but Caitlin always an enigma. Were any of the stories she told Vix true? Which ones? Were her Seattle friends her first real loss? Who the hell was she? She didn't know, so how can we?

I write novels, so maybe I read Summer Sisters differently from most folks, but I've just finished my fourth or fifth rereading and still find it fascinating for its failures. I mean, really, the entire plot hinges on the relationship of Victoria and Bru and yet we never learn anything about what they do together — other than apparently constant, endless sex. I know more about Victoria's level of moistness (always very wet) than what they talk about, if anything. Victoria is a smart young woman who becomes a Harvard student while Bru is a fairly simple non-college construction worker — this would be a fascinating relationship if Judy Blume wanted to tell us something beyond moisture levels. Surely they can’t spend every moment show more making passionate love. Do they ever talk? I’m a construction worker myself, and I’m married to a very smart woman, so I know there’s a lot of balance, a lot of recalibration and mutual respect, that needs to happen — and we get nothing in this story.

My theory is that Judy Blume wrote an outline for this book and then started filling in the pieces, but — perhaps due to advancing age — found she was unable or unwilling to complete all the parts. The first 100 pages are the good Judy Blume with her full powers as a writer. Then it becomes fragmented. Maybe as the characters grew up, she was less interested or less able to imagine their thoughts. Or maybe she just got sick of it, but her agent told her to pile up the pieces and stitch together whatever she'd written so she could sell it.

And yet, I've read it four or five times. The opening is that good. If you read it and at some point find yourself losing interest, it's okay to drop out. But the beginning, the friendship of the two girls, is dead-on, Judy Blume at her best. show less

Before reading Summer Sisters I hadn’t read a book by Judy Blume in what feels like ages, but I’ve always been of a huge fan of her middle grade books and I couldn’t wait to read something from her aimed towards older reads. Thankfully, I had a mostly free day when I started reading because I couldn’t put the book down. The characters were great and despite some of their actions I can’t say that there’s one that I really dislike. The writing made me nostalgic— now that I’ve finished reading I feel like I need to call my best friend on the other side of the country and catch up. Summer Sisters has instantly become one of my favorites.

I wish I knew what magic makes a book so compelling that you just get sucked right into it and look up hours later, thinking, “I should go to bed, but just a few more pages, but ohhh I’m really going to be sorry when my alarm goes off at 5:30, but just a few more pages, ohhh what the heck okay another chapter.”

In another author’s hands, maybe, this would not have been that kind of book. There were a couple of twists but it was otherwise fairly predictable. The characters were not especially complex and yet I just wanted to know what happened, what they did, why did they do it, and yes I even needed a few Kleenex at the end. The brief little peeks into every (with one key exception) character’s innermost thoughts following key show more events should have been annoying, but I was instead delighted with them.

I can’t explain it, but this was one of those books. More than 400 pages and I am a slow, stodgy reader, but I gobbled this one up in 2 days. Go figure.

Paperback version, picked up secondhand on a whim 3 years ago.

Previous Updates:
7/16/18 – 297/416 show less

Admittedly, I was afraid to even pick up this book. Like most young American girls, I grew up reading Judy Blume. I enjoyed introducing her to my niece too, when the time came. But reading her adult fiction? I didn’t know if I dared risk it. Not to be a glass-is-half-empty sort, but I was afraid of being disappointed. Afraid that my childhood love for Ms. Blume’s words, her stories, her jokes, would be easily and quickly dashed by a less than stellar endeavor at a book for the big girls (or boys). And without the good authority of my dear, bibliophilic friends, I never would have.

It was a little tricky to get right into the story. The circular narrative was a little choppy, but a clever take on third-person omniscience that I show more eventually embraced and now can’t imagine the book without it. I found myself surprised to come back around to the beginning in just past the middle, but it only served to heighten the story, the meaning, and my reaction to it all.

The novel spans more than a decade of summers between Caitlyn and Victoria (Vix) in Martha’s Vineyard as they explore the Power and giggle over Packages, discovering boys, love, sex--just not in that order. The story is peppered with laughs, adolescent and adult awkwardness; in an exploration of the dichotomy of rich and poor, the rights of the have and have-nots; the bonds of the family you’re given and the comfort of the family you find; first loves and first lovers; first loss; and, of course, what it means to be a Summer Sister.

The ending was somewhat tidy, like the closing of a Family Channel movie, where we get to see what happened to all the people we’ve met in the story, but, I fear, without that, the very end wouldn’t have the same vital impact.

In the end, I cried. I’m not ashamed. They were huge, tear-filled sobs. In fact, as I write this, I feel my throat tightening and my eyes fill again in the memory of it. Which is not to say that the end was actually sad. Even now, I can’t tell you for sure exactly what or who I am crying for. I suspect it’s for myself and what I found in myself while reading this book. I suspect it’s for the years of my life that I feel went un-treasured and undocumented, even in my own mind. And I suspect it’s because I never had a Summer Sister . . . and that maybe I am better for it. show less

A good book that looks at the lives of two girls from teenagers through adulthood and the issues that these two women face. One aspect that I liked in this book was the pages where Blume lets inside the head of some of the main characters, like an aside. A very nice aspect of this book. This book gives insight to the fact things are not always what they seem and the grass is not necessarily always greener on the other side.