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Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz
The Blurb On The Back:
Noah’s happier than I’ve seen him in months. So I’d be an awful brother to get in the way of that. It’s not like I have some relationship with Melinda. It was just a kiss. Am I going to ruin Noah’s happiness because of a kiss?
Across four sun-kissed, drama-drenched summers at his family’s beach house, Chase is falling in lust, and trying to keep his family from falling apart.
Chase and his family spend every summer in a beach house in Delaware. He, his younger sister Claudia and older brother, Noah, hang out with the Hathaways – Melinda, Bella and Shannon. For Chase, the house represents the one place where his family are truly together as his family is under strain – his younger brother, Gideon, is deaf and refuses to learn proper sign language, his mother is expecting another child, Noah keeps running away and she and Chase’s father keep arguing.
Over the course of four summers (from Chase’s fifteenth birthday to his eighteenth), Chase tries to keep his family together. But this becomes increasingly difficult after Melinda Hathaway (who has always had an on/off relationship with Noah) kisses him. As Chase struggles with his conflicting feelings for Melinda and Noah, his family encounter tragedy and threaten to split apart for good.
Hannah Moskowitz’s second novel is a carefully structured family drama coupled with a coming of age story.
Chase is a subtly drawn character. He sees himself as the lynchpin of his family, responsible for holding them together and he’s particularly worried about his older brother Noah, who runs away from the stress and can stay away for days at a time without getting in contact with anyone. His attraction to Melinda is carefully developed and it’s easy to see why he falls for her despite his better judgement.
Melinda is another well-drawn character and I liked the revelation of her backstory (although it was difficult to believe that Chase and Noah could miss an obvious allusion to it).
Where I had problems though was in the use of Camus and the way in which his quotations form a short-hand between Noah, Chase and Melinda. Although the device works well at first it soon becomes heavy-handed to the point where it didn’t seem to add anything more to the story. In addition the character of Gideon didn’t work for me – he was too cutsey and his deafness too much of a device to emphasise the divisions in the family, such that the disability sometimes seemed there to serve the plot.
There is much to admire in Moskowitz’s writing – she writes with emotional and intellectual intelligence, is willing to try new things. Although this book didn’t quite come off for me, it is still worth a look and I’m really looking forward to seeing what Moskowitz does next.
The Verdict:
Although there is much to enjoy in this book – notably Moskowitz’s deft first person voice – the overall novel didn’t work for me. In particular the use of Camus quotes became too heavy handed and the central character of Gideon, for me, existed to serve the plot and highlight the family divide rather than work as a character in his own right.
Across four sun-kissed, drama-drenched summers at his family’s beach house, Chase is falling in lust, and trying to keep his family from falling apart.
Chase and his family spend every summer in a beach house in Delaware. He, his younger sister Claudia and older brother, Noah, hang out with the Hathaways – Melinda, Bella and Shannon. For Chase, the house represents the one place where his family are truly together as his family is under strain – his younger brother, Gideon, is deaf and refuses to learn proper sign language, his mother is expecting another child, Noah keeps running away and she and Chase’s father keep arguing.
Over the course of four summers (from Chase’s fifteenth birthday to his eighteenth), Chase tries to keep his family together. But this becomes increasingly difficult after Melinda Hathaway (who has always had an on/off relationship with Noah) kisses him. As Chase struggles with his conflicting feelings for Melinda and Noah, his family encounter tragedy and threaten to split apart for good.
Hannah Moskowitz’s second novel is a carefully structured family drama coupled with a coming of age story.
Chase is a subtly drawn character. He sees himself as the lynchpin of his family, responsible for holding them together and he’s particularly worried about his older brother Noah, who runs away from the stress and can stay away for days at a time without getting in contact with anyone. His attraction to Melinda is carefully developed and it’s easy to see why he falls for her despite his better judgement.
Melinda is another well-drawn character and I liked the revelation of her backstory (although it was difficult to believe that Chase and Noah could miss an obvious allusion to it).
Where I had problems though was in the use of Camus and the way in which his quotations form a short-hand between Noah, Chase and Melinda. Although the device works well at first it soon becomes heavy-handed to the point where it didn’t seem to add anything more to the story. In addition the character of Gideon didn’t work for me – he was too cutsey and his deafness too much of a device to emphasise the divisions in the family, such that the disability sometimes seemed there to serve the plot.
There is much to admire in Moskowitz’s writing – she writes with emotional and intellectual intelligence, is willing to try new things. Although this book didn’t quite come off for me, it is still worth a look and I’m really looking forward to seeing what Moskowitz does next.
The Verdict:
Although there is much to enjoy in this book – notably Moskowitz’s deft first person voice – the overall novel didn’t work for me. In particular the use of Camus quotes became too heavy handed and the central character of Gideon, for me, existed to serve the plot and highlight the family divide rather than work as a character in his own right.