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Swallow Summer
Two music producers pack up their studio along with their dreams of ever making it in the industry after too many bands fail to pay their bills...
A woman takes up an invitation to visit an ex-lover in Arizona, only to find his apartment is no bigger than a motel room...
A former drama student runs into an old classmate from ten years before, hardly recognising the timid creature he has become...
Each character in Larissa Boehning's debut collection experiences a moment where they re forced to confront how differently things turned out, how quickly ambitions were shelved, or how easily people change. Former colleagues meet up to reminisce about the failed agency they used to work for; brothers-in-law find themselves co-habiting long after the one person they had in common passed away; fellow performers watch as their careers slowly drift in opposite directions. Boehning's stories offer a rich store of metaphors for this abandonment: the downed tools of a deserted East German factory, lying exactly where they were dropped the day Communism fell; the old, collected cameras of a late father that seem to stare, wide-eyed, at the world he left behind. And yet, underpinning this abandonment, there is also great resilience. Like the cat spotted by a demolition worker in the penultimate story that sits, unflinching, as its home is bulldozed around it, certain spirits abide.
A woman takes up an invitation to visit an ex-lover in Arizona, only to find his apartment is no bigger than a motel room...
A former drama student runs into an old classmate from ten years before, hardly recognising the timid creature he has become...
Each character in Larissa Boehning's debut collection experiences a moment where they re forced to confront how differently things turned out, how quickly ambitions were shelved, or how easily people change. Former colleagues meet up to reminisce about the failed agency they used to work for; brothers-in-law find themselves co-habiting long after the one person they had in common passed away; fellow performers watch as their careers slowly drift in opposite directions. Boehning's stories offer a rich store of metaphors for this abandonment: the downed tools of a deserted East German factory, lying exactly where they were dropped the day Communism fell; the old, collected cameras of a late father that seem to stare, wide-eyed, at the world he left behind. And yet, underpinning this abandonment, there is also great resilience. Like the cat spotted by a demolition worker in the penultimate story that sits, unflinching, as its home is bulldozed around it, certain spirits abide.
- GenresShort Stories
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
25 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 1, 2018
A reasonable collection though there was no story in it that I would consider a must read.
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January 13, 2021
3.5 stars
October 2, 2016
“One swallow does not a summer make” goes the popular proverb which would have been a fitting epitaph for Larissa Boehning’s debut short story collection Swallow Summer. The appearance of swallows symbolises positive energy brought on by the beginning of the warmer season, but also represents the fleetingness of happiness when the birds congregate again to migrate to sub-Saharan Africa, marking the end of the European summer. They are a perfect metaphor for the outlook on life of most of Boehning’s characters: thirty-somethings stuck between, as the author puts it, “hope and resignation”.
Boehning’s book, originally published in 2003, follows the ground-breaking short story collection Summerhouse, Later by fellow Berlin resident Judith Hermann, the German edition of which came out in 1998. At the time, Hermann’s stories were a breath of fresh air, injecting a much-needed contemporariness into a literary scene perennially pre-occupied with Germany’s past. Boehning mines pretty much the same ground as Hermann but unfortunately with a much lower yield than her predecessor.
You can read my full review on www.thetranslatedworld.wordpress.com
Boehning’s book, originally published in 2003, follows the ground-breaking short story collection Summerhouse, Later by fellow Berlin resident Judith Hermann, the German edition of which came out in 1998. At the time, Hermann’s stories were a breath of fresh air, injecting a much-needed contemporariness into a literary scene perennially pre-occupied with Germany’s past. Boehning mines pretty much the same ground as Hermann but unfortunately with a much lower yield than her predecessor.
You can read my full review on www.thetranslatedworld.wordpress.com
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews