Why Join?

  • Add New Books

  • Write a Review

  • Backpack Reading Lists

  • Monthly Newsletter

Join Now

The Book of Summers

The Book of Summers

Author(s): Emylia Hall

Location(s): Devon, Hungary, London

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): Late 1980s onwards

Location

Content

Beth Lowe has been sent a parcel.
Inside is a letter informing her that her long-estranged mother has died, and a scrapbook Beth has never seen before. Entitled The Book of Summers, it’s stuffed with photographs and mementos complied by her mother to record the seven glorious childhood summers Beth spent in rural Hungary.
It was a time when she trod the tightrope between separated parents and two very different countries: her bewitching but imperfect Hungarian mother and her gentle, reticent English father: the dazzling house of a Hungarian artist and an empty-feeling cottage in deepest Devon. And it was a time that came to the most brutal of ends the year Beth turned sixteen.

Since then, Beth hasn’t allowed herself to think about those years of her childhood. But the arrival of The Book of Summers brings the past tumbling back into the present: as vivid, painful and vital as ever.

Review this Book

To review this book, please

Log in

Book Reviews

Lead Review

This novel is very atmospheric and evocative of the two places of her childhood; there is the contrast between the cool and damp Devon and hot sunny Hungary.- Leslie Reader –

Read review