The Summer of Impossible Things by Rowan ColemanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
This book was on virtually every 'must-read' list for 2017, so I went hunting for it on Netgalley, who thankfully provided me a copy.
We follow Luna and her sister Pia, newly grieving for their Mum. They've headed from England to their Mum's hometown in Bay Ridge to settle her finances and sell her old home. Having recently uncovered a mind-numbing secret about Luna's origins, the girls are trying to fathom how to deal with all this information.
And then something truly bizarre happens to Luna. In normal cases this would be a spoiler, but given that it is actually mentioned in the blurb itself, I won't classify it as such. Luna travels back in time, precisely thirty years in the past, and meets her mother.
At first, Luna is convinced that something is wrong with her. That her vivid hallucinations portend some grave illness she must be suffering, but with each trip, she brings back conclusive evidence, no matter how small, that she actually did travel through time.
She takes it upon herself to use this magical opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and give her mother the life she truly deserved, even at the cost of her own.
The central conceit is an attractive one - who doesn't love time travel. But a lot of the book felt a little derivative of stories past. There's a hint of the darkness we found in Octavia E Butler's Kindred, as well as some of the fairytale outlook of Back to the Future. Set primarily in Bay Ridge, we don't quite get the feel of that area, especially in the 70s, when it has become a hub of tourism due to the filming of Saturday Night Fever.
The copy I received from Netgalley was rife with typos, which made it an annoying read from time to time. It's an easy to read book, the language so simple it doesn't tax the brain in the least. The writer doesn't give her readers much credit - spelling everything out for them a little too slowly. She even falls into the trap of trying to explain the time travel phenomenon - bad idea, never justify yourself, just go with the flow. We have already cottoned on to what is happening to Luna, what her actions will mean for her, etc, long before the writer bothers to let Luna address it.
There's a plethora of cliches included as well. It's the in thing now to have a scientist as the lead female protagonist, hence Luna is a physicist. Her sister is messed up, but gregarious. She is aloof and awkward. Everyone is super hot looking and thin-privileged. There's no variety in the kind of people they meet. It grates on you. Also, aside from Luna, not a single other woman in the book is interested in science. No, she's the only one. Even in the 70s - you mean to tell me, none of those girls she meets ever caught an episode of Star Trek and fell in love with the show? Bizarre!
There's a plot twist near the end of the book, at a point when we're thinking we've wrapped it up. It's a good twist, but comes out of the blue. We have a perpetrator pinpointed from the very beginning, no one negates it. But, suddenly, the bad guy changes and... well we didn't see it coming. I would have understood if others had hemmed and hawed over the name of the villain, but they didn't. It felt like somewhere down the line the editing got jumbled.
There are conveniences thrown into this book that... are just too convenient. The mother in this book leaves behind a whole bunch of filmed tapes recalling the life-changing past incidents and the information they need - how many people would do that? Spoilers ahead:
I think most readers would have guessed that Luna was the product of her mother's assault. It weighs heavily on the girls, and took over the mother's life. She was sad and depressed all her life, eventually leading to her own suicide. The trouble is, partway through, out of the blue, the girls' aunt reveals that the perpetrator did not die the night of the assault. No, the aunt just made the mother think that she had killed that man so she could get away in peace. She left the country that night to be with her future husband in England.
So Luna then lays into the aunt, pretending like it wasn't the rape that destroyed her mother's wellbeing, but the act of killing the perpetrator. Suddenly the bad guy shifts from rapist to protective older sister. There's nary a mention of the horrid, cruel life that said aunt then had to endure for the rest of her existence at the hands of the mobster whose help she took to clean up the mess. I found all of that too cruel and too convenient. Women turning on each other instead of taking down the real bads - it's unfair.
Then, when Luna think she's saved her mother, she alters her life a little too much. Her mother is alive because she didn't kill her assailant, and Luna is happy. But it doesn't bother her at all that the man going scot-free for so many years would have affected other women. She (and by extension the reader) is hit over the head with a young woman's account of what happened to her at a very young age at the hands of this man, and only then does Luna decided to act. Why didn't she think her mum needed saving from the entire incident? Or that other people would need saving too? End spoilers.
The writing detracted greatly from the story - I found it lacking throughout, especially in the initial stages when the girls are working through their grief. Te dialogue was mechanical - even if they weren't able to process what had happened, no one would speak like that.
The uber-fairytale ending was a little too happy and convenient - except for one bit which I don't know if it's supposed to be dreamy or ick. It drew too many parallels to Back to the Future. But then we probably need a few feel-good books and movies in our lives.
I can see why this book comes so highly recommended. It's good, but the writing could have been better. And the typos... They need to fix the typos.
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