*In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned....*
So begins this sweet, ominous novel by Charles Simmons. Set against an idyllic landscape of water, sand, and sky, it recounts in exquisite detail the momentous events of a boy's 16th summer that reveal to him the dark facts of adult passion. On Bone Point, an island off the New England coast, the boy's long, lazy days of boating and swimming are sharpened by a growing awareness of his charismatic father's infidelities. Add to this the presence of a flirtatious middle-aged woman and her beautiful 20-year-old daughter, who have rented the guesthouse, and the tale is set in motion. This tautly constructed novel is both startling and haunting—an irresistible story of memory, desire, and suspense.
**
### Amazon.com Review
Charles Simmons seeds his narrative with clues from the very beginning. First, there is the epigraph from Ivan Turgenev's classic *First Love*, a tale of obsession, betrayal, and death, followed by the sobering first sentence, "In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned." By the time Zina, the 20-year-old object of the young narrator's affection, appears, all the foreshadowing is tidily in place--Michael and his father have already had one brush with mortality in the water as they swim out to a sandbar and are nearly carried away by the tide. When Zina and Michael's father first meet, another warning bell goes off. "I could see right away he liked her. When he didn't like someone he smiled and said nothing. It was clear that she liked him too. Father was very handsome." Readers familiar with Turgenev's story will know what happens next; those who aren't will have to wait awhile to have their suspicions confirmed. In the meantime, Simmons paints a subtle, heartbreaking portrait of one last summer of innocence and of a paradise about to be lost.
### From Publishers Weekly
Simmons, a former editor at the New York Times Book Review, made his name as a writer with a series of surreal comic novels, including Powdered Eggs and Wrinkles, but the present book, a coming-of-age novella, is a complete change of pace. Written in a spare masculine style, it is based loosely on Turgenev's classic First Love and is narrated by Michael Petrovich, who recalls the memorable summer of 1963 when he was 16 and when Mrs. Mertz and her beautiful daughter, Zina, rented a neighboring house on the East Coast offshore island of Bone Point. Michael's father is a handsome philanderer whose easygoing ways cause tension with his mother; meanwhile, Michael is trying to impress Zina while rejecting the cynical view of women offered by a worldly young friend. Matters come to a tragic head at the Labor Day party that ends this unsettling summer. Simmons's calm, detached telling of the tale, and the major role played by the strongly evoked ocean setting, make for an experience that seems more European than American, and it is interesting to note that this slight but telling book was first published, to enthusiastic reviews, in France.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Description:
*In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned....* So begins this sweet, ominous novel by Charles Simmons. Set against an idyllic landscape of water, sand, and sky, it recounts in exquisite detail the momentous events of a boy's 16th summer that reveal to him the dark facts of adult passion. On Bone Point, an island off the New England coast, the boy's long, lazy days of boating and swimming are sharpened by a growing awareness of his charismatic father's infidelities. Add to this the presence of a flirtatious middle-aged woman and her beautiful 20-year-old daughter, who have rented the guesthouse, and the tale is set in motion. This tautly constructed novel is both startling and haunting—an irresistible story of memory, desire, and suspense. ** ### Amazon.com Review Charles Simmons seeds his narrative with clues from the very beginning. First, there is the epigraph from Ivan Turgenev's classic *First Love*, a tale of obsession, betrayal, and death, followed by the sobering first sentence, "In the summer of 1963 I fell in love and my father drowned." By the time Zina, the 20-year-old object of the young narrator's affection, appears, all the foreshadowing is tidily in place--Michael and his father have already had one brush with mortality in the water as they swim out to a sandbar and are nearly carried away by the tide. When Zina and Michael's father first meet, another warning bell goes off. "I could see right away he liked her. When he didn't like someone he smiled and said nothing. It was clear that she liked him too. Father was very handsome." Readers familiar with Turgenev's story will know what happens next; those who aren't will have to wait awhile to have their suspicions confirmed. In the meantime, Simmons paints a subtle, heartbreaking portrait of one last summer of innocence and of a paradise about to be lost. ### From Publishers Weekly Simmons, a former editor at the New York Times Book Review, made his name as a writer with a series of surreal comic novels, including Powdered Eggs and Wrinkles, but the present book, a coming-of-age novella, is a complete change of pace. Written in a spare masculine style, it is based loosely on Turgenev's classic First Love and is narrated by Michael Petrovich, who recalls the memorable summer of 1963 when he was 16 and when Mrs. Mertz and her beautiful daughter, Zina, rented a neighboring house on the East Coast offshore island of Bone Point. Michael's father is a handsome philanderer whose easygoing ways cause tension with his mother; meanwhile, Michael is trying to impress Zina while rejecting the cynical view of women offered by a worldly young friend. Matters come to a tragic head at the Labor Day party that ends this unsettling summer. Simmons's calm, detached telling of the tale, and the major role played by the strongly evoked ocean setting, make for an experience that seems more European than American, and it is interesting to note that this slight but telling book was first published, to enthusiastic reviews, in France. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.