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Summer Gone

Average rating: 5/5

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Summer Gone

by David Macfarlane

Knopf Canada | July 25, 2000 | Trade Paperback

The admired, bestselling author of The Danger Tree joins Knopf Canada with his masterful first work of fiction: a haunting novel about love experienced and love remembered that is also an unforgettable celebration and evocation of the brief beauty of a northern summer.

Summer Gone is about that moment when everything stops. Like skilled canoeists, we briefly hold a perfect balance - poised between innocence and experience, life and death, discovery and loss, the promise of spring and the sadness of autumn - and we believe, foolishly, that those perfect days will last forever.

Set among the islands and lakes of "cottage country", this major first novel from one of Canada''s premier writers explores the stories of three generations of lost summers. But Summer Gone is primarily the story of a divorced father and a young son separated by the silence of estrangement, and how during one extraordinary night on an ill-fated canoe trip the silence is broken. Yet, as the novel unfolds, tragedy looms over father and son in ways they could never have imagined, and leads to the book''s gripping and startling conclusion.

Summer Gone is an exquisite novel, beautifully written and powerfully told.

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Reviews

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    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...

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 5/5

    Beautifully written.

    Janice Lindsay

    3 years ago

    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.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?

    Rating: 5/5

    a haunting human story

    Carol Neuman

    5 years ago

    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.

    • Was this review
      helpful to you?
    Nathan

    Rating: 5/5

    Summer Gone

    Nathan

    12 years ago

    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.

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Details

From Our Editors

For an autographed copy ofSummer Gone Click here..

A divorced father and his young son spend a summer in cottage country, trying to overcome the strain brought about by a difficult divorce. The silence that surrounds them is finally broken during an ill-fated canoe trip. As David Macfarlane's Summer Gone nears its end, tragedy rears to strike in unimaginable ways, revealing a startling conclusion.

From the Publisher

The admired, bestselling author of The Danger Tree joins Knopf Canada with his masterful first work of fiction: a haunting novel about love experienced and love remembered that is also an unforgettable celebration and evocation of the brief beauty of a northern summer.

Summer Gone is about that moment when everything stops. Like skilled canoeists, we briefly hold a perfect balance - poised between innocence and experience, life and death, discovery and loss, the promise of spring and the sadness of autumn - and we believe, foolishly, that those perfect days will last forever.

Set among the islands and lakes of "cottage country", this major first novel from one of Canada''s premier writers explores the stories of three generations of lost summers. But Summer Gone is primarily the story of a divorced father and a young son separated by the silence of estrangement, and how during one extraordinary night on an ill-fated canoe trip the silence is broken. Yet, as the novel unfolds, tragedy looms over father and son in ways they could never have imagined, and leads to the book''s gripping and startling conclusion.

Summer Gone is an exquisite novel, beautifully written and powerfully told.

From the Jacket

The admired, bestselling author of The Danger Tree joins Knopf Canada with his masterful first work of fiction: a haunting novel about love experienced and love remembered that is also an unforgettable celebration and evocation of the brief beauty of a northern summer.

Summer Gone is about that moment when everything stops. Like skilled canoeists, we briefly hold a perfect balance - poised between innocence and experience, life and death, discovery and loss, the promise of spring and the sadness of autumn - and we believe, foolishly, that those perfect days will last forever.

Set among the islands and lakes of "cottage country", this major first novel from one of Canada's premier writers explores the stories of three generations of lost summers. But Summer Gone is primarily the story of a divorced father and a young son separated by the silence of estrangement, and how during one extraordinary night on an ill-fated canoe trip the silence is broken. Yet, as the novel unfolds, tragedy looms over father and son in ways they could never have imagined, and leads to the book's gripping and startling conclusion.

Summer Gone is an exquisite novel, beautifully written and powerfully told.

About the Author

David Macfarlane has won 6 gold National Magazine Awards as well as the Sovereign Award for Magazine Journalism and the Author''s Award for Magazine Writing; he is also a national columnist for The Globe and Mail. His memoir of Newfoundland, The Danger Tree, won the Canadian Author''s Association Award for Non-Fiction in l992. He lives in Toronto.

Trade Paperback

288 Pages, 5.16 x 7.99 x 0.76 in

July 25, 2000

Knopf Canada

English


0676972802
9780676972801

From Community

From the Critics

"Summer Gone is a homage to our most excruciating and beautiful memories. Within this novel is the marvellous height of summer, perfect and fleeting, a place and time we can never get enough of." --The Globe and Mail

"Summer Gone is a novel about telling stories - one that merges fiction and truth, past and present, memory and action, into one dangerous and beautiful current." --The Calgary Herald

"David Macfarlane rises to the challenge of a first novel…[he] gets degree of difficulty points…[and] it works. Mr. Macfarlane writes beautifully and gets his story across powerfully…a rewarding reading experience." --The Ottawa Citizen

"Summer Gone is a summer vacation in the north woods, with all that implies to you the reader." --Winnipeg Free Press

"As with most good fiction, the real joy of Macfarlane's book is in the quietly choreographed moments where the author's insights into people mesh with his undeniable skill with language." --Eye

"…Summer Gone is a polished, well-crafted novel that dwells on fresh, powerful themes." --The Annex Gleaner

"…Summer Gone is a triumph of voice, storytelling and slippery connections." --The Vancouver Sun, Aug. 28/99

Praise for The Danger Tree:
"I''ve just discovered The Danger Tree and am stunned. It is so good. About the best prose to ever come out of this country, for my money." - Alice Munro

"[David Macfarlane's] Newfoundland memoir, The Danger Tree, is easily one of the most readable and beautifully written books to emerge from Canada in recent years." --Mordecai Richler, Saturday Night

"The Danger Tree is a masterpiece. David Macfarlane is an architect of the past, building extraordinary memory mansions in which the reader feels eerily at home." --Alberto Manguel

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