A Summer Place

by Sloan Wilson

The new smash best seller by the author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. This novel is about how marriages are made on earth - and unmade. It is about the price people pay for changing their minds about love.

Genres: Fiction, Romance, Coming Of Age, Novels, Classics

308 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Sloan Wilson (May 8, 1920 – May 25, 2003) was an American writer.
Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, Wilson graduated from Harvard University in 1942. He served in World War II as an officer of the United States Coast Guard, commanding a naval trawler for the Greenland Patrol and an army supply ship in the Pacific Ocean.
After the war, Wilson worked as a reporter for Time-Life. His first book, Voyage to Somewhere, was published in 1947 and was based on his wartime experiences. He also published stories in The New Yorker and worked as a professor at the State University of New York's University of Buffalo.
Wilson published 15 books, including the bestsellers The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) and A Summer Place (1958), both of which were adapted into feature movies. A later novel, A Sense of Values, in which protagonist Nathan Bond is a disenchanted cartoonist involved with adultery and alcoholism, was not well received. In Georgie Winthrop, a 45-year-old college vice president begins a relationship with the 17-year-old daughter of his childhood love. The novel The Ice Brothers is loosely based on Wilson's experiences in Greenland while serving with the US Coast Guard. The memoir What Shall We Wear to This Party? recalls his experiences in the Coast Guard during World War II and the changes to his life after the bestseller Gray Flannel was published.

Wilson was an advocate for integrating, funding and improving public schools. He became Assistant Director of the National Citizens Commission for Public Schools as well as Assistant Director of the 1955-56 White House Conference on Education.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Algernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adolescent sexuality on Pine Island, Sylvia thought now with the horrified candor of added years. Some anthropologist should study it, the way they study Samoa and New Guinea and places like that.

The sleeper hit of my summer reading list, this 1958 novel about romance on a private island in Maine still feels fresh and hard hitting on social and personal issues that have yet to be solved by an American society that seems to believe the 1950s’ were a golden age of prosperity and morality.
Sloan Wilson, with his journalist background, has not only penned a superbly written love story, he set out to expose the deep rooted hypocrisy and the corruption that lives underneath that American Dream that politicians today want us to celebrate.

Pine Island, Maine, thrust itself out of the sea like a huge medieval castle. There it stood, the only island in sight, with its gothic cliffs defying the combers rolling in across the North Atlantic.

A privately owned piece of real-estate, the exclusive Pine Island belongs to a select group of wealthy homeowners who took pains in the charter to make sure undesirables are kept out. Two young people visiting the island in the summer of 1934, Ken and Sylvia, experience both the appeal and the rejection of this exclusivist club.
Sylvia is sixteen years old and belongs to a well-to-do family who was invited to the island as a prospective candidate for inclusion in the homeowners association. She is strikingly beautiful and finds it easy to blend in with the younger generation of the local gentry, spending her summer in an almost neverending string of parties and hijinks.
Ken is athletic, good-looking and very poor, working on the island over the summer for his college fund. The rich kids, led by Bart, make fun of him, in particular after they notice the longing looks he casts in the direction of Sylvia, who joins in willingly in the cruel jesting.

... the island was a perverted Garden of Eden, from which one was expelled for the sin of poverty.

>>> might contain some slight spoilers from here on <<<


The story of Ken and Sylvia underlines the contrast between the innocent, natural attraction the two young people feel for one another with the social conventions and the peer pressure exercised by the Pine Island setting. That anthropology remark is not so far off the mark as I initially believed in this forcefully puritan society that nevertheless believes having money and power gives people license to be abusive towards those less fortunate.

They worked out their own language, almost, and if anyone on Pine Island said a person was cheerful, that person was being insulted, whether he knew it or not.
Yes, Sylvia thought bitterly, this is a great place. The weak are eulogized for being sensitive and the strong are criticized for being tough. Gloom is highly fashionable and cheer is regarded only as a symptom of a vacant mind. The clever islanders, the wonderful sophisticated people who find it so funny to understate or to put everything in reverse!
That sweet sixteen summer on an island that seemed custom made for romance ends up in tears and pain plus a brutal rape scene for the two young people who don’t know how to control their emotions.

>>><<<>>><<<

A couple of decades and a world war intervene before we can reconnect with Pine Island. The fortunes of the people involved suffer a reversal more powerful than the social games they used to play in their youth.
Sylvia is back on the island, married to ringleader Bart, the scion of old money. Yet, theirs is not the bright future they imagined at sixteen: Bart’s family fortunes have been squandered, he himself came back from the war with an alcoholic problem and a string of unwise investments. Bart is now struggling to make ends meet for his wife and son John by renting the family home to summer tourists. The worst part of the experience is having to live on the island all year long, with the isolated, cold winter months almost impossible to survive unscathed.
Ken, motivated by the trauma of his island experience, went back to his studies with a vengeance, used his degree in chemistry and his talent to become a millionaire from his patents, marries a heiress who turns out to be frigid and mean-spirited.
He plans to return to Pine Island with his wife and daughter Molly, hoping to lay down to rest the demons of his youth.

What nonsense, Ken thought; the affairs of one’s youth are meaningless and best forgotten. A middle-aged man, a great success, a man supposedly of some intelligence, should certainly not waste time with that.

The scene is set for a re-enactment of the summer romances of 1934 with two middle-aged protagonists, both now married to people they are disappointed with, both forcefully still repressing their emotions that led them into trouble the first time round.

Only the dead at heart find virtue easy, the dead at heart or those few fortunate ones who marry for love and do not change.

What Bart and Sylvia tend to forget is that they are now responsible not only for themselves, but for the young people they have brought into the world: Sylvia’s son Bart and Ken’s daughter Molly, both sensitive and introverts, both watching with fear the dissolution of their parents marriages.

The inevitable romantic entanglements happen over the summer: Sylvia has an affair with Ken, John and Molly spend their days together innocently exploring the island, lost in a world of their own:

The fact that it is occasionally possible to talk about things next to the heart was an extraordinary discovery. It was as though they had always been alone in a desert world bereft of people, and for the first time met a human being; it was as though they had been deaf and dumb from birth and just found the power of speech; it was astonishing, this discovery that conversation can go beyond ordinary communication, that language when combined with love can conquer the separateness of people.

At sixteen and still in school, the young people witness the collapse of their carefully constructed lives when their parents start contested divorce proceedings. Ken and Sylvia run away to Florida. Bart dives back into the bottle. Helen runs back to her bigoted parents. John and Molly feel betrayed, abandoned, all alone in a world gone mad.
They only have each other to turn to, but they don’t have the means or the experience to control their own lives, so John and Molly are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the older generation, despite their best intentions.

>>><<<>>><<<

The second half of the novel explores in detail the broken marriages and the struggle of Ken and Sylvia to rebuild their lives over the obstacles their former spouses raise. Ken’s in-laws, in particular, are portrayed as the sort of cancer that subverts all the goodwill and all the decency a responsible man feels towards his chosen wife. Their narrow-mindedness and their selfishness is a closer portrait of those celebrated decades of post-war prosperity than the cute Hollywood pictures of the period or the bright sentimentality of the jukebox music.

... it wasn’t only the Jews that Margaret Carter wanted to avoid, Ken discovered as the house-hunting expedition progressed. She didn’t want a Catholic neighborhood, and “of course”, she said, one had to be especially careful to steer clear of the Polish section and the Italian section – those people were making so much money nowadays, their houses didn’t look any different from anyone else’s, and one could get fooled. Some of the old parts of the city were being “infiltrated by Negroes”, the real-estate agent said, and “of course” they had to be avoided at all costs.

Although Ken stopped talking about it, the compiling of the list of Margaret’s dislikes became an obsession with him. When she refused to patronize a Chinese laundry, he learned that she was against the Chinese and, it seemed, all Orientals. The Russians she hated with patriotic zeal. The English she thought snobbish, the French immoral, the Germans brutal, and all South Americans lazy. Category by category, she closed humanity out.

Ken’s theory of anti-people was borne out by Bruce’s political tastes, which favored preventive war, capital punishment, and clapping strikers in prison, and by Margaret’s literary taste for blood. The converse of Jorgenson’s theory, as Ken termed it, was obviously that people who don’t like people or life become pro-death.

I get the feeling Sloan Wilson is using Ken, son of an immigrant family from Scandinavia, as an alter-ego of his investigative reporter persona, exposing the problems of his contemporary society and looking for a way out of this deep pit of WASP resentment coupled with feelings of entitlement. We called it white supremacy in 2024 and its just as ugly to witness, at least to me, as it was to Ken in 1954.

John, attending Colchester Academy, has to deal with yet another ugly institution of the American educational system: bullies are tolerated, probably under the misguided impression that it toughens up kids for later life experiences:
“He was liked by everyone,” he heard himself saying. “He was one of the most popular boys in school.”

The truth is that his room mate Bill was driven to suicide by the constant bullying of his classmates for being less athletic, less outspoken, too awkward and too ungainly and too slow for their taste, while the teachers punished the victim who reported the abuse for being whiny and weak.

Bill had lived for two years in the midst of cruelty and jeers, how the headmaster had covered up, how even he himself had ended by finding it impossible to tell Bill’s mother what had happened to her son.

All of this comes back to haunt John when he is called on the phone by Molly to be told that their own summer romance led to a teenage pregnancy.
All of the books themes coalesce now around the question whether every generation is doomed to repeat the errors of the previous one, whether children have to pay for the sins of their parents.
Pine Island, now locked out and empty of its summer people by the coming of winter, is mirroring the inner landscape of the young man’s emotions, his sense that he has nobody to turn to for help.
Can the writer’s alter ego in the novel find a way out of the conundrum?

“I don’t know. It seems as though we ought to be able to help them. We went through so nearly the same thing ourselves.”

All this developed in his mind into such a puritanical lecture that finally his sense of irony was aroused. What a great moralist I in my middle age have become, he thought; how stern I am about the morals of others!

Ken would be justified in his righteous anger at the boy who seduced his teenage daughter. The reader might still be a harsh judge of this character, given Ken’s earlier actions on the island the rape scene and the later breakage of his marriage vows. On the other side of the balance we have only his ability to be honest with himself, his sense of fairness and his capacity to take responsibility for his own mistakes in life.
I think these qualities are a good starting point on the road to redemption, but it will be a hard journey, both for him and Sylvia and for their children.

Do not be like me: that is really what I want to tell my daughter, he thought. And do not be like Helen, and do not be as Sylvia was at your age; do not withhold and do not give; just wait; youth should be a time of suspended animation, and I have almost forgotten the loneliness and the hunger, the impatience, and the waste, and that is good, for if I remembered these too clearly I could give no fatherly advice.

“They’re going to need our help. Are you going to comfort them by offering to share their guilt? Nonsense! They’re going to need our love, money and advice, in that order, not a group psychoanalysis!”

“Why are they destroyed?” he retorted. “If we all have courage and common sense, why can’t something good be made of this? What’s so goddamn terrible about two youngsters in love?”

I hope I didn’t reveal all the salient points of the plot, but I don’t regret going deeper into the actions and the motivations of the characters: this is not an action driven story, but a sort of anthropological study of the mating habits of the American people midway through the twentieth century, a condemnation of puritanical hypocrisy and fake outrage.
I think I should have stressed more how good a writer Sloane Wilson turned out to be, how well he captures the island setting and the teenage inner turmoil, how he can emotionally charge his scenes without overloading us with cheap sentimentality or purple prose, how sharp his journalistic pen can be when he feels something ugly must be exposed.
I know he has another very popular book from the period [The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit] and I plan to check it out soonish, as well as I will search for the two movie adaptations of his novel.

[Maia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always had a secret passion for 50s stories but lately, with Mad Men, it's blossomed way out of control! For years I've been collecting old and/or out-of-print copies of 30s, 40s, 50s and even 60s novels and very often I've tried to match a movie to a book, when I know it's based on one (and in that period, it usually is). But though I've seen 'A Summer Place' the movie, with Dorothy McGuire and Sandra Dee a number of times, I'd never read the original novel before. Then last week I re read Wouk's Marjorie Morningstar and embarked on a steady diet of other popular stories published in the 50s.

A Summer Place was Sloan Wilson's second big hit as a writer--the first was 'The Man in The Grey Flannel Suit' (filmed with Gregory Peck) with which he forever coined a 'term'; those very men, in effect, depicted in the TV show 'Mad Men'--basically, 50s commuting executives. In 'The Man...' Wilson explored the underlying tensions, disappointments, restlessness and general ennui that seemed to envelop nearly everyone who wasn't a straight shooter in the 1950s and he did so quite well though not, granted, with the lyrical power of Richard Yates' 'Revolutionary Road' (although Wilson was the far better appreciated author at the time, ironically enough). Then in 'A Summer Place' he attempted to dig deeper, perhaps to the actual costs of such enormous and unspoken unhappiness, to the depths of despair in people's lives when their lives follow choice made for reasons of social convention instead of authenticity. In this, he also quite though not entirely succeeds and where he fails is where the storyline and writing read dated. In many ways, most books are dated when we read them decades later but the difference between an artist (Jane Austen, say) or a craftsman (as Wilson unreservedly is) probably lies in the ability to transcend the dated aspect so that the contemporary reader temporarily 'forgets' she is reading something of 'another time.'

This story is about two thwarted love affairs: the first is between upworldly mobile Ken, who starts as off as the poor boy and ends up a true American success story, and gorgeous, passionate Sylvia, child of upworldly mobile parents of her own who, trying to avoid her family's descent, ignores her love for Ken in favor of an apparently 'safe' choice with blue-blooded Bart. As teenagers, Ken and Sylvia are in love but cannot give in to their love. Twenty years later, Sylvia has come down in the world with alcoholic, broken, penniless Bart and Ken is a millionaire with a straitlaced, puritanical wife he dislikes. Their old passion is immediately (perhaps too quickly) rekindled and after much 1950s wrangling of Good vs. Bad in the vein of Moral Absolutisms, this time they give in to their love anyway. The problem is, they both have kids: Ken has Molly, a daughter he adores who (perhaps in too easy a parallel to the teenage Sylvia) is fast becoming the sort of beauty that men want at once (thereby sparking her frigid mother and even frigidier grandmother to fits) and Sylvia has a younger daughter and an older son, John, who hints at becoming the sort of Gregory Peck male that Bart has failed to be (or Ken, for that matter, too): strong but sensitive and ready to fight for what he wants even when he is full of insecurity.

The really interesting thing in this book, though, is how well Wilson delineates some almost tragicomic 1950s characters: Ken's wife Helen and his mother-in-law Margaret are almost perfect portraits of a woman type that, unfortunately, society has produced to the thousands and writers have long delighted in showcasing (again, think Jane Austen's mother in Pride and Prejudice). These two self-righteous, sanctimonious souls of pure repression delight in repressing everyone around them and some of the scenes in which they appear (especially Margaret's absurd fall etc) made me want to knock them over AND laugh out loud! Similarly, his ability to enter the heads of Molly and John, first as young preteens (considered even younger in those days) and then on the cusp of young adulthood is quite stunning, and always poignant. While hardly a great writer, Wilson nonetheless manages to make yo care for his character. In many ways, I found his 'voice' throughout the story far more sympathetic and empathetic than, say, Wouk in 'Marjorie Morningstar'. I found Wilson's POV as young Molly more convincing and compelling--far less the product of the 'male gaze'--than Wouk's in Marjorie, and Wilson's ideas, coherent or not, more humane and less moralistic. He just seems, simplistically enough, a nicer man!

Where the book, for me, fails and feels dated is in the many unnecessary scenes and details that, really, add nothing to the story and today read entirely melodramatic: Bart's extreme alcoholism, the character of Todd Hasper, some instances of John at his awful boarding school--basically, these sections dragged on and today would most likely be edited out. The extreme judgmentalism of the era, though, a la Peyton Place is perfectly brought to light and, if melodramatic today, still rings true. Furthermore, I found both Ken and Sylvia--as the 'fallen' adulterers--quite tender and real in their love and concern for their children, even when the very 50s guilt they felt paralyzed such love until the end of the story, when their love is needed to 'save' the kids. I doubt any parent today would accept the terms of Ken's and Sylvia's separation or divorce from their exes simply because they'd been unfaithful: today (thankfully) your role as spouse does not impact your role as parent.

And, of course, there's the question of repressed sexuality, which manages to define everyone's life at that time, including Molly and John. If ever there's proof for the damage created by ignorance and lack of information or outlets, then this it.

[Samantha Glasser · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a beachside resort in Maine, teenaged Sylvia flirted with boys and made a lasting impression on Ken Jorgenson, a poor lifeguard who never permeated the social lives of the rich kids around him. Although she had feelings for him too, her family's influence on her won and she married Bart, the son of the owners of the resort. Years later, Bart is an alcoholic and the days of wealthy New Englanders flocking to their run-down resort are fading away. Ken is a wealthy inventor with a frigid wife and a beautiful daughter named Molly. He decides to relive his past at the same resort in Maine, this time as a member of the club, in hopes of winning Sylvia once and for all.

This novel spans a great deal of time, from their teenaged years through their early adulthood, to the lives of their children who are coming of age. Sloan Wilson is a beautiful writer whose skills take this routine romance and makes it more thoughtful, a notch better.

“With the sky so gray, they might sleep another couple of hours, she thought, and there was no awakening them. Sylvia welcomed opportunities for a little privacy; they came seldom enough.”

[Lee Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is exactly what I want in a summer read: mid-century fiction that was a bestseller, now mainly forgotten. Pretty people, pretty problems, and it's all a little bit dirty, in a fifties "social issue" sort of way, and shocking, in a "rape as seduction" sort of way, and melancholy, in a Don Draper sort of way.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this a part of My Big Fat Reading Project, a name I have given my research into the life I was born into and lived through. The reading reveals that life through novels, movies, history and biographies. I missed this one back when I was reading the books for 1958. It was made into a movie starring Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue, the theme song from which was one of my favorite songs in 1959.
I have also seen the movie which condensed the plot of the book into one summer. The book covers more than a decade in the life of its characters making the story more realistic and way less romantic. Its value lies in a look at the moral standards of the 1950s, full of repression and false standards about sex, passion, love and family. The damage done to those of us who grew up then, especially the females, was bound to spark the free love of the 1960s.
The writing is a combination of reportage mixed with drama as far as style goes. The subject matter brings back the confusion and uncertainty of adolescence for us middle class boomers.

[Sarah Obsesses over Books & Cookies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahhhh gotta love Sloan Wilson. He reminds me of the way John Irving writes...perhaps J.I. was inspired by S.W. Something about the way he takes a detail or a side character and teases out the backstory to where you forget this side character isn't really that important but the author makes you feel like he's important.
ANyway, what Sloan and John do best is to tease out all the interesting bits of domestic life. Sloan was just around a few decades before Irving so we get a taste of what life as like in the 40s and 50's.

This is not different form the other 2 books I read by Wilson. Marriage is strained, morals are questioned and kids are at stake.
In this story, we have the marriage of Syliva and Bart who Sylvia never really loved bart because she was attracted to Ken. This all happens in Maine at a hotel resort that families gather in the summer.
Ken was an outcast of sorts but the attraction is there and one night Ken and Sylvia get it on... it was described as a questionable rape but then we find out it was consenting (this was a saucy thing to write about for the time).
Ken leaves and goes and dives into work to make a shit-ton of money and gets married but he doesn't love his wife who is a frigid bitch.

Bart eventually comes back to the resort that is now being run by Bart and Sylvia and Syliva and Bart fall in love blah blah blah.
(this is all at the beginning so you're not being spoiled).
What gets a little strange is that both couples; ken and his frigid wife Helen and Sylvia with her unloved Bart both have children who..... also fall in love.
Sounds weird right?
but the way Sloan writes about it it's not weird and it's not even the point of the story. It's more about the characters and how they deal with their choices and how it affects others and if it matters so much. Everyone in the story are not without their flaws but you root for them because it's hopelessly so human.

[J.M. Cornwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although the book was written in the 1950s and is rooted in that era of sexual repression and social mores, A Summer Place still has relevance today with its characters' motivations and internal dialogue, the fear of what a forbidden love will do to the children in a marriage that is breaking up and the first blossoming of love in children unsure of themselves and the their place in the world as teenagers and as people. Sloan Wilson's deep understanding of the human heart and its contradictory emotions is at the core of this novel and his clear and simple prose bares the very nature of what it is to fall in love. Wilson's themes of prejudice, ostracism and the veneer of social acceptability are played out in the lives of two families brought together by convention and civilized expectations and Ken Jorgenson's musings about his daughter Molly's sexual awakening remain true even with the over exposed sexuality of our modern world.

[Victoria Tirrel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reminder of how crazy hormones can make us--how crazy it could make people who are now in their 70s. I was born in 1960 and only imagine those days before me as stiffled and unsexed. They were...but they weren't. The writing is old-fashioned in the amount of telling it does but it's worth it to be reminded of young love...and it's consequences.

[Bobbi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was so pleased to discover that one of my favorite movies was actually a book. :)

[Jenifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know how this book got on my to-read list, but I began searching for a copy everywhere; (no copies at the libraries or on libby - the only electronic copy was 10$ on Amazon.) I almost gave up, deciding I didn’t really want to read it anyway. Then we went to my mom’s for Easter dinner and I happened to spot it on her bookshelf! It felt so weird to just see it sitting there after I had been searching and searching for it!!

It felt like the writing here really conveyed the tone of the 1950’s, when it was written. I ended up liking it a lot. It’s a family drama/saga that spans quite a bit of time and highlights the mid-century ideals of the white upper class in America; infidelity and divorce, alcoholism, social striving and sexual repression. There was some boarding-school stuff (which I always like) and trauma leftover from the war.

There were a couple of sections that I thought were especially good; John and Molly’s developing relationship in the second half; as well as the flashback to when Bart was captaining the tanker or whatever it was.

There was a movie adapted from this novel at the time. I’m not interested in seeing that, and I’m kind of surprised it hasn’t had a remake since then.

One more funny thing; I read “The Shining” a few months ago and so many things on Pine Island, Maine reminded me of a King novel. It got pretty desperate there at the end.

Old copy from Norma’s library

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adultery, unwed pregnancy, rape, alcoholism, divorce, etc., this was all very taboo subject matter when this book came out in the 1950's. The story chronicles the lives of two families and the fates that befall them as they navigate through these issues. It begins when the parents of the two main characters are teens themselves.

The book was made into a movie in 1959 which is a glorious, technicolor, melodramatic soaper with one of the most recognizable theme songs in movie history. Panned by most critics, it's still a fun film, even though the melodrama is a little over the top and some of the dialogue a little stilted. Of course, the book goes into much, much more detail than the film, with each chapter delving into one of the main characters and what is going on in their psyches. You get to see some of the driving motivations, however flawed they may be, behind their actions. I would suggest reading the book before watching the film, as you will then have much more background knowledge of the characters.

All in all, a great read if you enjoy books from the 1950's and '60's that lean toward the soap opera-ish themes, a la Peyton Place, Valley of the Dolls, etc.

[Cathryn Conroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written in 1958, this book must have been scandalous at the time! Ken and Sylvia meet when they are teenagers. He loves her. She loves him--maybe. But she marries Bart, who was in her "class." They have two kids. He loses his money. He starts drinking. She's unhappy. Ken shows up with his wife and child. Can you see where this is going? No! You can't! Yes, Ken and Helen divorce. And Sylvia and Bart divorce. And Ken and Sylvia marry--but that is not the story. The story is the tortured teenage romance between Ken's daughter, Molly, and Sylvia's son, John. Brilliantly written, this novel is gem. Author Sloan Wilson truly understands the human psyche--what drives us to do good and evil. Highly recommended.

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm loving this book. It was one of my all-time favorite movies in my youth. The producers did a great job of keeping the feel of the book in the limited time they had. I'm really enjoying going into so much more depth with these characters, both the bad and the good. Molly's mother and grandparents are horrid! If you remember A Summer Place (who doesn't remember that beautiful theme music?), I highly recommend the book.

[Sorrythankyou79 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Started a bit slow, but once it got going I really enjoyed this book. The story was really quite sad, but it kept me interested... Isn't it funny how characters in a book can make you hate them or love them. I really liked John and Molly - even though they were awkward. I didn't like Sylvia, or Ken at all... although at times I sympathized with them. Overall, a great story - and an interesting read.

[Joan Grisham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saw the movie. Enjoyed the book

The book is more realistic than the movie that led me to read it. I found it a very interesting. I like reading the original books that inspired old movies. I am fasinated by what the director could or could not include because of time or morality.

[Sergio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Due coppie infelici, due matrimoni naufragati, quattro genitori non sempre pronti a interpretare i sogni dei propri figli, ma si sa, i giovani a volte sanno fare scelte migliori e soprattutto credere nell'amore e nella convinzione che questo profondo sentimento possa abbattere tutti gli ostacoli...un libro meraviglioso

[Wan Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story line very stimulating. It nice to read this type of novel once in a while. Ken is a very sensible father, husband and friend. I had kept this book since the middel 70s and was glad I am still rereading it.

[Diane · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book written in 1958. Hard to believe that it was published at that time. The issues dealt with are as current today as they probably were at that time, but not discussed. Highly recommend.

[Lesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book of scandal and romance! The dual love stories in the book are entertaining and full of troublesome love struck people.
The movie is even better!

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book, but I had forgotten how "wordy" writers could be back then. The movie is still one of my all-time favs.

[Ella · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully written classic. Though the book was written some 60 years ago, the subject of love and it's consequences is timeless.

[Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed yhe book very much fast read. 1950s morality!!!

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot more story than the film. Very dramatic.

[Rebecca Manders · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved it from the start--although it did get long-winded somewhere in the middle--but the ending was just "okay". Definitely worth reading, though.

[Joan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a good read. I did see the movie which made me want to read the book.

[Sylvia J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great read! Great characters. Great story. So glad I found it when cleaning out my parents’ garage!

[Jonathan Greenwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent book. It's billed as a romance but it would be more accurate to describe it as a drama with romance sprinkled in. There is lots to say about class, expectations and how opinions can suffocate us all if we let them. But it's also about how love is in the end the greatest equaliser and I think Sloan Wilson believed that it would ultimately be the supreme thing for humans, not just the "American neurosis" of talking about work and other superficial nonsense. I have yet to see the film but I really found the book to be a well written and overall great character study of two broken adults finding love and finding their own children going through the same thing. I recommend this book but with the caveat it's not really a romance. It's flawed people finding their way in a treacherous society which happens to have the ingredient of love. I didn't love the characters though, only the kids were sympathetic. That's my only real complaint. 4/5

[Nina Foster · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is slow paced and melancholy, but enough depth to keep me turning the pages.

[Josh Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many months after reading The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, it felt like time to return to the mind of Sloan Wilson. It took me a month to get through since I exclusively read at work, but it was kind of nice to digest at that pace. Nearly every page used plot and characterization as social commentary, which is sometimes best received in bits.

The title may draw the mind to romantic vistas and the such, but A Summer Place is not that. Sloan immediately orients us to the precarious, uncertain vibe of the book with a startling and sensational description of Pine Island.

"Pine Island, Maine, thrust itself out of a sea like a huge medieval castle. There it stood, the only island in sight, with its Gothic cliffs defying the combers rolling in across the North Atlantic. The question of how it got there teased the mind. By the look of it, there must have been some explosion underground or a collision of massive forces which cast up this one island and left it as a frieze of violence."

FIRE. Wilson starts with the island and slowly zooms in on its inhabitants, starting with an old caretaker who names every one of his dogs Satan. Then we learn of the Hunter family, and a summer tutor/lifeguard named Ken Jorgenson, or "The Beast" as the teens call him. The start of the novel follows this small group: Ken, Bart Hunter, and Sylvia. I loved how Wilson jumped back and forth between the time of their youth and the present day with Bart and Sylvia married. The original premise of Ken (newly wealthy) bringing his family to Pine Island becomes all the more intriguing when we learn through flashbacks that he'd raped Sylvia and never stopped lusting after her.

After a brief stint on the island and the commencement of an affair between Ken and Sylvia, almost the entire rest of the novel actually follows their kids, Johnny and Molly. This book explores so much - the sins of the fathers being passed down on their children; the shame, fear, and sense of taboo around youthful sexuality; alcoholism; the complicated consequences of rape; overall 1950s American suburban culture. It does so much without Wilson ever nearing a soapbox. The characters do it all for him. Ken, Bart, and Sylvia each have moments near the end of the book where they pontificate on societal norms and expectations, and it was really interesting to see.

I felt quite invested in the characters, especially Johnny and Molly. I felt the tension between all their parents and I rooted for them as they traversed all the chaos of their youth (such as the suicide of Johnny's schoolmate, and their own sneaky ways of finding each other). The novel ends much in the same way it began, describing the island and its weather, this time using the setting to allude to what could be coming for the young couple - storms to be faced with calm---together.

Fantastic work on Wilson's part. Lovely prose and characters of incredible depth.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Follow your heart in love, despite who it hurts in the short term, it is the only way to live truthfully. Living truthfully will have its long-term rewards. The book is not what most would consider well-written or even necessarily interesting. I do believe, however, that we are led to lessons in our literary selections. This book helped me to appreciate where I am currently in my life's ventures and to have pride in my choices to follow my heart.