A Shadow on Summer

by Christy Brown

Riley McCombe, a crippled Irish novelist, is on his first visit to the United States, guest of his British publisher's old friends, Laurie and Don Emerson. He is there to celebrate the American publication of his first novel, but more important, to complete in the peace and quiet of a small Connecticut seaside town, his second book. For that task, Laurie becomes his guide and mentor.This peace is disturbed by the young freelance photographer, Abbie Lang, hired by Riley's American publishers to take photographs at their celebration party. To Riley she is something sxciting and exotic; and Abbie falls in love. She takes him on a sight-seeing tour of New York, marvelously described, and then to her Greenwich Village studio where fruitlessly they spend the night together. For in the developing drama that emerges it becomes clear that though Abbie and Laurie both, in the their different ways, love him, Riley is incapable of response. He is a prisoner of his own ego, a man struggling at all costs for self-fulfillment through his writing, torture though his struggle may be.So he casts a shadow on the lives of both these mutually antagonistic women during the long New England summer. At the end, his book is finished, but will he ever write another? Abbie has been cast aside, but in a finely written chapter Laurie endeavors to give him hope. There may yet be a summer without shadows. In the end it must be up to him.

5 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Christy Brown was an Irish artist and writer. However in order to do both these things he could only use his left foot. Having been born with cerebral palsy this was the only
way he could express himself.
He was born in Dublin on the 5th June 1932. His mother was the first to notice that something was wrong. But it wasn't until he was just over a year - old that his parents sort medical help. By now
there were distinct signs that he had something wrong with him. The doctors told his mother that nothing could be done. She would never give up on him though. It was through her help and
support that he achieved what he did. Her love and strong belief that he was not totally incapable
drove her onto prove this.
Then it happened when one day he picked up a piece of chalk in his left foot and unsure what do
next. She began to show him by writing the letter "A" and encouraging him to copy it. After some difficulty he managed to do this. She then went onto teach him the rest of his letters. She taught him
as best she could since he couldn't go to school even though by this time he
was 6.
She had a very large family but, despite having to look after all of them and doing the household chores, she still found time to help him. She even started to build an extension on the house
so he could have a room of his own, to begin with his father and 4 brothers all of whom were bricklayers, refused to build a room for him. So she began to do it herself and they then took over.
Christy Brown published his autobiography My Left Foot in 1954. It was later turned into an award winning film. He also published several novels before his death in 1981.

Reviews

[Liz Polding · Rating 5 out of 5]

All the way through this book, I kept asking myself if I was missing something. Some nuance in the text, something that would explain why the book felt pretentious and flat. Having finished it, maybe that's the case. Maybe the verbosity and tortuous sentence construction is symbolic. My best explanation for this, and the most likely given who wrote it, and how much I love their other work, is the unreliable narrator perspective. This is an edit, btw. I re-read.

And so we have Riley, our unreliable narrator, who enunciates, rather than speaking, and is, in his own mind, a 3D, high minded character in a world of clichéd, 2D characters. Everyone is at pains to show off their enormous vocabularies and speculate at length about their feelings, about writing, love etc like endless freshers week in the English department of a really crap university. Some of the dialogue is risible and some of it, with a black character in particular, is frankly, racist; Riley makes us cringe, and so we should. We’ve all met Riley. He’s the commentary of Nabakov’s Pale Fire. He’s many current and past public figures, and he’s been on quite a few reality shows. Of course, I may be wrong about this interpretation too, but that’s how it felt on a re-read. I love this author’s work, and it bothered me that I didn’t get this. I don’t imagine it makes much difference (certainly not to the author!). I just think that if you realise that you got it wrong, you should put it right if possible.

[Kathleen O'Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times the prose is beautiful; at other times, it is very difficult to read. Not a book I'd recommend.

[Îmsóñg Lòñèr · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like the author