A book about summer, that most incandescent and evanescent season -- about lazy days, fleeting love, and tempers that flare in the heat. In the uniquely ephemeral atmosphere of a summer resort, Thisbe Nissen unfolds an ever-deepening story of ancient loyalties and betrayals, while showcasing the qualities that readers have come to expect from her: exuberant wit, fierce intelligence, and unforgettable warmth and compassion. [Knopf]
Critic Reviews
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Outstanding
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Library Journal Beth E. Andersen
Nissen (The Good People of New York) is the kind of writer who sends the reader compulsively in search of everything else she has written. Highly recommended. [15 June 2004, p.61]
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Emiliy Barton
As the dramatic struggle over the boy plays out, enfolding the owners and employees of the hotel, as well as the other islanders, the novel's intensity is heightened by the enclosed space in which it unfolds.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Sometimes choppy narrative, ditto tiresome dialogue, and ponderous chapter headings ("As They Flee You'd Think They Float on Wings") don't quite obscure Nissen's acute sense of the messy ambivalence of love, while her depiction of a child's grief is heartbreaking.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Susan Adams
Nissen handles a complicated plot with skill and paints an especially poignant picture of what it means to go home again.
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Mixed
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Publishers Weekly
The book's plotting is labored, driven by the calculated disclosure of a host of dark secrets.
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Mixed
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San Francisco Chronicle Amy Westervelt
So enchanting are the characters that the story they inhabit is not only secondary, but almost seems to get in the way at times.
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Barbara Fisher
Waiting to discover what will ignite and who will get fried is no picnic.
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Unfavorable
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Chicago Tribune Beth Kephart
Real people are far more nuanced than the novel's characters are, and the characters speak as they think, which is to say without poetry, without great insight, with a tremendous reliance on familiar turns of phrase.
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Unfavorable
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The New Yorker
Nissen's characters are not quite clichés, but they always act according to their well-defined types, leaving us saddened but never surprised.
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