Abby’s Reviews > Sunburn > Status Update

L = unreliable narrator?
L describes S as some entity that draws in everyone’s attentions and that what L feels for her is equal to what others in school feel. Paints S as untouchable & wouldn’t feel back & their relationship as not special.
L describes her touch as intrusive when putting ice to S’s back, when it’s acc prob welcomed.
Just look at the way S writes to L in her letters. She loves/wants her too.

“I begin to panic…I get hot, and my mind races, my heart pounds. And then I get to look at her, and it doesn’t matter…It just doesn’t matter. The panic goes.”

“This Summer has been just a little bit too warm, the sun has been a little too bright. My thoughts have been a little bit too uncontrollable. And my emotions a little too humid. They only grow more humid. It all just gets stickier.”

“I drop last night’s letter on her stomach. It’s so silly that we have become pen pals when we spend all day together. There isn’t much I can report in my letters, except for the things that happen in my head, where another version of her has taken residency.”

“She lets me fall asleep in the sun; it never seems to annoy her if I stop talking and drift off. I once woke to her putting more suncream on my shins. It really felt like she cared about me…I would like to say it feels intimate, if that isn’t weird.”

“There are frantic moments, when I feel like we couldn’t possibly get close enough.”

“Although I try to keep a respectful distance between us, gravity always brings me closer and closer to her, until we lie inches apart.”

Another reference to Susannah being like the sun and some powerful entity with its own gravitational force.

She is also described as “golden” (like the sun) and how she likes to bathe under the rays of sunlight

I really like this passage. The atmosphere of warmth and summer, along with unspoken tension and adoration, yet to be truly acknowledged by the protagonist and yet to be confirmed that it is reciprocated by the love interest.
Picture in camera roll. Page 70-71. Beginning “it started a few weeks ago in her garden, a few innocent hours…”, ending “I would like to say it feels intimate, if that isn’t weird.”

“…she stand on the backs of my shoes in school Mass. And then, when I turn around to say something about it, all the sunlight of March comes in through the stained-glass windows and dyes her strange colours.”

What a fantastic image, and a metaphor for how looking at Susannah is like staring at the sun, a phrase already used in previous passages.