In Summer Light, Zibby Oneal’s 1985 book about a seventeen-year-old girl’s season of self-discovery, is one of the last young adult novels that I read as a young adult.
In it, Kate Brewer, daughter of renowned painter Marcus, has been recovering from mononucleosis and writing a paper on The Tempest. Kate has a fractious relationship with her father because she sees the way the household is ordered around Marcus’s moods and because of how he treats the work of the women who surround him—his wife, his daughters.
Marcus is the kind of man who says things at dinner like, “Painting is like making love.”
He’s your basic old white man artist nightmare, and Kate is now mature enough to dislike the way he dismisses Kate’s mother, Floss—herself a former painter who now devotes herself to her garden and her husband’s moods. Marcus says of one of Floss’s canvasses:
“There were artists all over New York doing that those years. In fact, when I met Floss she was doing one. Remember that big thing, Floss? What did you call it? ‘Coney Island’?”
Kate’s mother paused, serving a spoonful of peas. “‘Jones Beach,’” she said.
“Oh, right. Well, I knew it had the name of some swimming place.”
In a few casually brutal sentences, Marcus dismisses the only painting that Floss has ever seen fit to keep.
Kate herself has tried to paint and encountered a similar reaction from her father, resulting in her giving up her artistic ambitions. But when graduate student Ian Jackson arrives to catalog Marcus’s paintings for a retrospective, Kate begins to reconsider how her choices are dictated by her father, and decides to explore where her talents lie.
At another point in the book, Oneal notes:
It was the sort of conversation that she and her mother sometimes had, not so much for the sake of what they said, but because their voices moving back and forth were a kind of touching.
Marcus is the kind of man who says things at dinner like, “Painting is like making love.” He’s your basic old white man artist nightmare.
In Summer Light is beautifully written. Sections from this book might seem at home in the pages of TheNew Yorker. Indeed, with its spare, evocative prose and the restrained feelings of its characters, In Summer Light is also for me associated with a certain kind of story about privileged white people. This level of spareness and restraint can only happen in the absence of having to explain the world in which the book takes place. The implication is that if the reader doesn’t understand the nuances and modulations, she should learn.
This is a setting in which the loudest noises come from the clink of wine glasses above the strained silence of a dinner party. The two “lower class” characters—housekeeper Mrs. Hilmer and her daughter Frances—are treated with disdain by Kate because they ask openly for what they want—they are too direct.
In the same way, the reader of In Summer Light is schooled to value what is unsaid and read between lines—sometimes, the relationship of text to reader is like the way Kate and her mother communicate, “not so much for the sake of what [is] said, but … voices moving back and forth.”
Indeed, with its spare, evocative prose and the restrained feelings of its characters, In Summer Light is also for me associated with a certain kind of story about privileged white people.
The reader builds meaning into the silence. She works to keep up with the prose—not the other way around.
This is not to say that I dislike In Summer Light. I loved it as a fifteen (or sixteen) year old, knowing that I didn’t understand all the currents and nuances swirling in its pages. I wanted to master this way of looking at and being in the world. And part of the answer, for me, was to stop borrowing books that were supposedly aimed at me.
On rereading, I still love In Summer Light because it is so insightful about the practical and emotional work that women do, because it captures so well that feeling of straining toward adulthood, of learning one’s worth and power. And yes, I love it now because it has kind of beautiful writing that I trained to appreciate after first having read it. But of course, part of that training is learning to look down on what In Summer Light is—a novel for teens, a book written by a woman for young women.
I’m going in circles, aren’t I?
At least, that’s how I’ve felt trying to write this. But this is what I got from all of my reading and fancy degrees: that there are hierarchies. That epic poetry—by Homer, by Virgil—is more important than lyric poetry—Sappho. That literary fiction is better than genre fiction. That the genres most looked down on are mostly written for and about women and girls—romance and young adult fiction. And here is Oneal, who has written a book about young women and their work in a style that can be approved by men, in a genre that is not.
What I’m trying to say—what In Summer Light shows—is that a lot of the work of women is quiet or dismissed. And that women’s artistic output ends up being hushed or lost, too. It’s almost, almost as that work doesn’t exist:
“There were artists all over New York doing that those years. In fact, when I met Floss she was doing one. Remember that big thing, Floss? What did you call it? ‘Coney Island’?”
Kate’s mother paused, serving a spoonful of peas. “‘Jones Beach,’” she said.
“Oh, right. Well, I knew it had the name of some swimming place.”
In Summer Light met with acclaim after its 1985 publication. Oneal also had also written two earlier YA novels, The Language of Goldfish (1980) and A Formal Feeling (1982, nominated for a National Book Award for Children’s Fiction). She penned children’s books and non-fiction. A Google search revealed that she was still teaching writing as recently as last year. But despite praise for Oneal’s work, all of her young adult novels appear to be out of print.
top photo: “Mixing the perfect colour,” flickr / Jill
At the beginning of Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, eleven-year-old Margaret Simon and her family move from New York to New Jersey just before Labor Day.
The story takes place over the school year. We see Margaret adjusting to a new classes and new friends, including her next door neighbor, Nancy. Nancy also initiates Margaret and two other girls into her secret club, the Preteen Sensations, and she plants unflattering rumors about Laura Danker, a tall, busty classmate.
Margaret is entering adolescence. She has questions about bras, getting her period, and boys. She also wonders about religion. Her father’s family is Jewish, and her mother’s is Christian. In their suburban New Jersey town, she does not know whether to join the YMCA or the Jewish Community Center (JCC).
Attempting to find out what she wants to be takes the form of a yearlong class project. She goes to temple and to church—and she finally meets her estranged Christian grandparents.
Although it was fiction, I do remember Margaret also had the status of a manual of adolescence.
Judy Blume is the much celebrated—and oft-banned—author of children’s, young adult, and adult novels. Blume’s books deal with adolescence—particularly sex—in a matter-of-fact way. Like Margaret and Nancy, my friends and I were curious about sex. Sometimes we whispered about it via Tiger Eyes, Forever, and Deenie—via the books of Judy Blume.
Margaret was published in 1970. I read it the 80s when I was in fifth or sixth grade. I may have received my purple paperback copy of the book from one of my friends for my birthday. Margaret dealt with menstruation, breasts, and bras. There was a Spin-the-Bottle scene. Although it was fiction, I do remember Margaret also had the status of a manual of adolescence. It was in libraries and recommended by teachers because it was seen as “realistic.”
So while Margaret had the aura of being forbidden (and was banned on occasion) because it was about tricky subjects, it was also seen as educational. That’s how its existence in libraries was justified, and that’s why it was probably handed to me.
Margaret is the first-person, present-tense narrator. She works hard at school, but she’s not a genius. She’s not tall, not precocious. She is a middle-class Everygirl trying to find her place. Margaret’s search stands in contrast with the certainty of her frenemy, Nancy Wheeler.
Nancy brings up every topic that will shape the book (and Margaret’s thinking) in that first meeting: sex/adolescence, insecurity, and religion.
Nancy defines many of the terms of Margaret’s first year in the suburbs. “Oh, you’re still flat,” Nancy notes on meeting Margaret. Margaret is immediately on the defensive: “‘Not exactly,’ I said, pretending to be very cool. ‘I’m just small boned, is all.’” Nancy says later, “I figured you’d be real grown up coming from New York City. City girls are supposed to grow up a lot faster.”
Nancy brings up every topic that will shape the book (and Margaret’s thinking) in that first meeting: sex/adolescence, insecurity, and religion. Nancy is the one who tells Margaret that she has to pick Christianity or Judaism or risk being socially stranded. She tells Margaret how she should dress for the first day of school. In later encounters, she polices their friend Gretchen’s weight. She tells her girls that they have to wear bras and that they all have to like one boy—Philip Leroy. And she tells Margaret how she should react to their classmate Laura Danker.
Laura is taller than anyone in the class. She’s pretty—this is in fact the first thing that Margaret observes to Nancy. Nancy does not like this. She calls Laura, “The big blonde with the big you know whats.”
She adds that Laura has a bad reputation. “My brother says she goes behind the A&P with him and Moose.”
There are, by the way, no queer people, no disabled people, no people of color in Margaret.
Nancy is saying that because Laura is pretty and mature looking, she is promiscuous. As the year goes on, Nancy adds to the rumor, claiming that their sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Benedict, has a crush on the girl.
Laura Danker is the object of Nancy’s jealousy and fascination—and despite having doubts, Margaret chooses to believe Nancy.
Nancy enforces the standards in Margaret’s peer group. According to Nancy’s vision, girls are supposed to be attractive, but not too beautiful—like Laura. They should be uniform.
There are, by the way, no queer people, no disabled people, no people of color in Margaret.
This, I think, is the triumph of this book: how Blume manages, despite the tight focus on Margaret’s consciousness, to show that her assessments aren’t always right.
Blume captures the push-pull of Margaret’s conflicts very well—the tension between what Margaret sees and thinks about Laura, about the boys in her class, about life, and what Nancy tells her she should see.
Margaret is a normal girl. Sometimes she is mean. Sometimes she parrots her friend and her parents and she doesn’t think for herself. By the end, Margaret sees just how fallible these people often are.
This, I think, is the triumph of this book: how Blume manages, despite the tight focus on Margaret’s consciousness, to show that her assessments aren’t always right. Margaret is an unreliable narrator whose friends and family are also proving unreliable. The reader sees how her judgment can be led astray. We can sympathize with Margaret’s feelings and in turn form our own judgments.
Near the end, Margaret confronts Moose—her secret crush—about the rumors that Nancy goes behind the A&P with the boys:
“Nancy told me that Evan told her that you and Evan—” I stopped. I sounded like an idiot.
“You always believe everything you hear about other people?” Moose replies. “Well, next time, don’t believe it unless you see it!”
Margaret was pushed on me as realistic, but I knew—I saw—that there were limits to its realism.
As I’ve said, there are no queer or disabled people in Margaret. Everyone is white. “I have not tried being a Buddhist or a Moslem because I don’t know any people of these religions,” Margaret writes about her yearlong religion project.
Of course there were Buddhist and Moslem, disabled, and queer people in the suburbs in the 1970s. My parents weren’t white. They lived in the suburbs.
“Next time, don’t believe it until you see it!” Moose says.
Well, what I knew—what I saw—was that I was alive and living in the suburbs—that my parents were there. Margaret was pushed on me as realistic, but I knew—I saw—that there were limits to its realism.
There is a relatively recent update to the book where Margaret gets her period and her mother shows her how to use a pad. “Now look, Margaret—here’s how you do it. The pad fits inside your panties and—”
In the version I had, Margaret used a belt to hold the pad in place—and belts were mostly outdated even when I was growing up. But it’s funny the things we choose to update in the name of staying “realistic,” isn’t it?
But if I had doubts at the end—if I still had uncertainty about what was real and what was not—well, asking, doubting, and questioning is what Margaret taught me to do.
I still love Judy Blume. I like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Yes, re-reading this book frustrated me at times. But I admired the way, despite the narrow scope and focus of the narration, that Blume shows that there is a wider world, that Margaret should doubt what she’s told, that what her friends tell her, what her parents and grandparents and teachers say, is open to question.
Teachers probably told me that Judy Blume’s books were realistic; in many ways they are. But if I had doubts at the end—if I still had uncertainty about what was real and what was not—well, asking, doubting, and questioning is what Margaret taught me to do.
I read Sad Cypress, one of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot novels, several times while I was in junior high. It was probably my favorite book featuring the dapper, egotistical, foreign (to the English) sleuth.
In Agatha Christie’s 1940 murder mystery, young and beautiful Elinor Carlisle stands accused of murdering young and beautiful Mary Gerrard. The story is told partly in Elinor’s extended flashbacks, in discussions between Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and Dr. Peter Lord, and in courtroom scene.
In the beginning, bright, young thing Elinor receives an anonymous note informing her that her ailing aunt, the wealthy Laura Welman, is being manipulated by an “artful” girl. Elinor and Laura’s nephew by marriage, Roddy Welman, decide to visit their aunt to make sure she’s well—and to ensure that their inheritance isn’t hijacked.
Roddy is described as sensitive and fastidious—disliking emotional display. What he says he loves most about Elinor is her polish and reserve—he likes the fact that she’s a cold fish. She’s really, really not.
Elinor and Roddy are engaged. From the first, Roddy is described as sensitive and fastidious—disliking emotional display. What he says he loves most about Elinor is her polish and reserve—he likes the fact that she’s a cold fish.
She’s really, really not.
In fact, Elinor loves Roddy with a passion bordering on desperate, but she has twigged on to the fact that Roddy prefers that she act distant.
At the estate, Elinor deals with her aunt’s nurses and makes the acquaintance of her new doctor, Peter Lord, who is immediately smitten with her. Meanwhile, Roddy runs into Mary Gerrard, the lodge keeper’s daughter and Aunt Laura’s favorite, and in turn falls head over heels. Elinor is distressed by this development and her behavior becomes somewhat erratic; She laughs hysterically at her own jokes and gives dark looks to her rival.
Not long afterward, Aunt Laura dies intestate, resulting in her entire fortune going to Elinor. She breaks off her engagement with Roddy and Mary Gerrard dies after eating a sandwich prepared by Elinor.
Elinor is seemingly the only one with motive to kill Mary Gerrard, and she has plenty of opportunity.
Lovelorn Peter Lord asks Poirot to find enough evidence to acquit Elinor and he proceeds to unravel the case in a way that I still find wholly satisfying.
Christie, who lived from 1890 to 1976, is one of the most read and widely translated writers in the world. She penned 66 full-length detective novels, 33 of which were Hercule Poirot books, and the character also starred in 54 of her short stories.
Christie, who lived from 1890 to 1976, is one of the most read and widely translated writers in the world.
She penned 66 full-length detective novels, 33 of which were Hercule Poirot books, and the character also starred in 54 of her short stories. Her other mysteries featured sleuths such as Miss Jane Marple and Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, and she wrote a handful of “romances” (the stories are bittersweet) under the name Mary Westmacott.
My junior high school library had a full shelf of Christie, but I went and bought my own paperback copy of Sad Cypress.
I liked the structure of murder mystery. I liked the scattering of clues, the red herrings, that final gathering of evidence where minor statements suddenly acquired major significance.
In many ways, reading Agatha Christie’s Poirot books trained young me to be a close reader. Instead of looking at bluster and swashbuckling, I started paying attention the small movements of characters, to slips, and to tiny, betraying details: shared names, a scratch on a wrist, a figure of speech.
But the books educated me in other ways. Christie’s work was full of tossed-off literary references (she could always be depended on for out of context Shakespeare quotes). One Poirot mystery I remembered, Appointment With Death, has one of the characters spontaneously reciting a song from Cymbeline. The title, Sad Cypress, is from Twelfth Night and one point, in the book, Peter Lord describes watching Elinor cutting bread and butter and Poirot interjects, “Charlotte and the poet Werther.”
References to The Sorrows of Young Werther by German Romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe went over my young head—and frankly, I didn’t know that much more about the Bard. Within 10 years of reading Sad Cypress, though, I went on to graduate school to study Elizabethan and Jacobean literature—including lots of Shakespeare.
Of course, it now seems marvelously ironic to me that I received my first education on the importance of high literary culture by reading supposedly low culture detective novels.
Of course, it now seems marvelously ironic to me that I received my first education on the importance of high literary culture by reading supposedly low culture detective novels.
But there were other mysteries in Sad Cypress.
For instance, the book had jokes which I found completely inscrutable. At one point, Dr. Lord hears Elinor in a fit of hysterical laughter. He asks why she is laughing. She says she doesn’t know. Peter Lord persists:
“I’ll write you out a tonic.”
Elinor said incisively: “How useful!”
He grinned disarmingly. “Quite useless, I agree. But it’s the only thing one can do when people won’t tell one what is the matter with them!”
I puzzled over this exchange. The rhythm of it—and Peter Lord’s grin—made me understand that it Elinor had made a joke. I looked up the definition of “incisive.” But I didn’t quite get it.
Now, I see that maybe Elinor had what all the het, white men of online dating claim they have: a sarcastic sense of humor.
In another passage, the prosecutor, Sir Samuel, questions Roddy Welman about Elinor’s feelings for him.
“If a lady were deeply in love with you and you were not in love with her, would you feel it incumbent upon you to conceal the fact?”
“Certainly not.”
“Where did you go to school Mr. Welman?”
“Eton.”
Sir Samuel said with a quiet smile: “That is all.”
My reaction then as now is about the same: Hahaha. What the fuck?
There was a whole world that the characters in these books knew—that the author knew—that I didn’t. I wanted to understand what that was. That was the real mystery to me.
There are literary conventions, and there are social conventions—the uncodified rules and norms of living in a specific culture. Sad Cypress is bound up in both of these things.
There are literary conventions, and there are social conventions—the uncodified rules and norms of living in a specific culture. Sad Cypress is bound up in both of these things.
Murder mysteries catch people in primal acts, doing things out of the bounds of civilized society. (Yes, my young, ridiculous mind conflated English society with civilized society.) They feature dignified dowagers strangling their enemies with their bare hands and nervous minor gentry poisoning their blackmailers. The very structure—the conventions—of these books emphasize that there are written and unwritten laws: murder is bad and it will be discovered and punished. But laughing hysterically out of turn is also not done and it can get you accused of terrible things.
“Miss Elinor’s a lady,” one character notes. “She’s the kind—well, you couldn’t imagine her doing anything like that—anything violent…”
Elinor is a lady and that means something. Roderick Welman is a gentleman who went to Eton and that somehow means something. The allusions, the titles, the wit—they all meant something. Hercule Poirot—a white man—is foreign, lives in England, and understands English convention; he grasps the meaning while not being held to it.
I would probably have been considered a savage.
I was a young girl in Canada. My parents were very much not English. They’d grown up in a non-western culture which had its own specific and mystifying codes of behavior and my parents often grew impatient because I didn’t know or understand things that to them seemed innate. But how could I have absorbed this knowledge absent that society? And how could I grasp the mores of the place I did live—in a midsized Canadian city, in a mostly-white junior high school—with only the guidance of my equally confused peers?
Learning about the impenetrable grown up world is, of course, frustrating for young people. But I had too many sets of unspoken rules to pick apart, and too many environments in which to apply them.
Learning about the impenetrable grown up world is, of course, frustrating for young people. But I had too many sets of unspoken rules to pick apart, and too many environments in which to apply them.
So much about my thinking then seems ass-backwards now.
I tried to absorb by osmosis the rules of late 1930s English society and apply them to Canada in the late 80s. I learned about Shakespeare to understand allusions in a detective novel. I read about murder to give myself polish. I consumed story after story about England and English people–or was I really reading because of the non-English detective whose powers of understanding came from being apart?
I came about it in a confused way, and yet, years later here I am alive, reasonably couth, and able find some jokes funny. One might say that I’m civilized enough.
But this would not have satisfied younger me. I would have preferred to be like Elinor: beautiful, charming, reserved yet passionate, just a little tragic. I would have liked to drink cocktails—whatever those were—and make witticisms that I couldn’t understand.
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