This story truly did capture Ontario's cottage country and the emotions that surround summer.

However, it was a bit of a tough read - lots of thoughts within thoughts, and run-on sentences. Add to that a lot of jumping around between different time periods, and various narrators, and it made it a slow, challenging read.

But yet, I was still enthralled by the story and the details...

A beautifully written book set in a Canadian landscape that is about boyhood, marriage, love and its absence. It is about how we cannot protect the people and things we love.That frailty or vulnerability makes them so presious it hurts. This book is for readers who know and enjoy savouring well-crafted and thoughtful literature and reaping the pleasure of a slow and rewarding journey, It is for those who like reading rather than racing to the end of a plot line.

This is about the past, and the stories we tell ourselves about oursleves. Everything intermingles so that chronology dances like the summer light sparkling on the lake. A gorgeous talent.

This novel is beautifully written and unfolds in a way that keeps you enthralled. Each moment and experience was so evocative of every summer that I spent up in northern Ontario.

I really enjoyed this book. Good literature, interesting story, a delight to experience this character and setting. There were so many times when you could actually feel you were watching this story from inside its setting. Big city people and lives with country hearts and desires.

This wonderful book took me back to my childhood summers spent at the cottage with my father. The almost lyrical wording transported me to the world that was created in this novel. A world of the outdoors, relationships, family and opportunities lost. I found myself pausing after reading a few chapters to reflect on the thoughts that were brought to my mind. A thoroughly enjoyable and inspirational read.

Enjoyed reading this book.

Delightful. Macfarlane has managed to capture the ephemeral love/hate relationship that I think we've all had with summer, especially the summers of Canada. The story weaves three tales into one, linking a family line three generations long with such elegant prose that you can feel and hear and taste the sensations of the world around the characters. It reminded me very strongly of Jeanette Winterson's style in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, in that the story isn't very linear. Sometimes you swoop around in circles from a moment, only to segue back to that same moment, later. Everything in the novel is complete and satisfying, and I closed the book wishing I was not yet finished.