The Summer We All Ran Away by Cassandra Parkin
My rating: 4/5 cats
a sad and lovely book about damaged people trying to pick up their pieces.
it takes place in “then” and “now,” with thirty years separating the narratives. in the then, we have a musician suddenly and uncomfortably finding himself turned into a rock star, with all of the trappings and complications that the lifestyle contains. the story opens with him having climbed a tree to escape the debauched party taking place at his enormous house, and a near-mauling of a guest by his caged panther. in the middle of all this he meets an arresting and singular woman, and falls instantly in love with her in the most enduring way.
in the now, we are in the same house, whose 70’s decor has gone through “dated and cheesy” and come right back around into retro-chic again. the rock star is long gone, and the people who are living there are essentially squatters, all of them being drawn to the house for their own reasons, nursing wounds both physical and psychological. they form a sort of family, and like any family, there is a little love and a lot of secrets.
so we go back and forth in time, learning about jealousy and love and betrayal and self-discovery and all the painful bits of being a human and how each character got the scars they carry. davey arrives drunk and beaten, stuttering his way through half-confessions and fear-based obedience. priss is a sixteen-year old runaway, bitter and mistrustful of love and beauty, playing up her working class background and hiding her vulnerability behind teenage f-bomb attitude and aggression. kate and tom are older and more haunted, and it’s best to discover their secrets as you read, not in a clumsy book report. and isaac, silent and inscrutable, who will affect them all, despite never uttering a word. in the then, we will follow reluctant celebrity jack laker through a tricky love triangle, addiction, and despair, and evie and mathilda, the women who shape him.
it is really beautiful, if a little unfinished-feeling in places, but i personally liked the loose ends. it’s basically about all the various ways people can become imprisoned and all the different shapes that cages can take, and priss’ story will break your fucking heart. if you like the jagged-storyline types of things, and stories where broken people co-exist in past-haunted, crumbling houses, you should probably read it.
i will definitely read more by this author.
