The Summer Friend

January 1, 2022

In Also a Poet, New York Times best-selling author Calhoun blends literary history and memoir, examining her relationship with her father, art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, and their shared passion for Frank O'Hara's work as she draws on taped interviews he conducted for a never-completed biography of O'Hara. In Somewhere We Are Human, distinguished writers/activists Grande and Gui�ansaca compile 44 essays, poems, and artworks by migrants, refugees, and Dreamers that help clarify the lives of those who are undocumented. Featuring a selection of letters exchanged by Ernest Hemingway and his son Patrick over two decades, Dear Papa was edited by Patrick Hemingway's nephew Brendan Hemingway and his grandson Stephen Adams (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, Horn's Voice of the Fish uses fish, water, and mythic imagery to illuminate the trans experience, with travels through Russia and a devastating injury the author suffered as backdrop. Former deputy editor of The New Yorker and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, McGrath looks back on childhood summers as both joyous memory and obvious idealization in The Summer Friend, also considering a close friendship with someone from a very different background. Starting out with his nearly dying on the day he was born, the world's best-selling novelist has some amazing stories to tell in James Patterson by James Patterson (250,000-copy first printing). Having probed the lives of Mary Shelley and Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's wife and daughter, acclaimed biographer Seymour takes on Jean Rhys, the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea in I Used to Live Here Once.

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March 1, 2022
Nostalgic tales of summer vacations by rivers and sea. In his debut memoir, McGrath, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review and former deputy editor of the New Yorker, wistfully reflects on New England vacations and a special adult friendship. He weaves together three separate strands of memories: youthful summers at his family's retreat, "a place we called the Camp"; summers with his wife and children ("it's possible to be bored half out of your mind and still have a pretty good time"); and summers with Chip and his family, whom they met on vacation. Memories abound, as one leads to another, then another, wafting back and forth in time. The author recalls the thrill of bridge-jumping into water 30 feet down; making fireworks runs and setting them off on the 4th of July; and "messing about in boats" of all kinds, especially his father's beloved Chris-Craft runabout made of mahogany wood," which "was so brightly varnished that, out of the water, it looked like a piece of furniture." Chip, an excellent sailor, taught McGrath how to sail, and the author takes particular pleasure in describing those adventures. He also lovingly chronicles his various summer residences, including Snowdie and its 62 chairs; Chip's family residence that the McGraths rented; and their own beloved 1930s Cape with its summer-house odds and ends. The narrative takes on a bittersweet character when the author finds out that his 57-year-old friend has prostate cancer. They tried spending more time together as the cancer spread. McGrath reminiscences about the "companionship of shared purpose" while lobstering, the two families swimming together, and when he and Chip played golf, laughing at each other's bad shots. Sadly, Chip died in 2015. "I wish we had had the conversation" about his impending death, writes McGrath, "for my own sake, if not for his." He wishes he had said more. "This book," he notes, "is what I should have given him." A warmhearted memoir imbued with a comfortable, old-fashioned, sweet ambience.

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March 1, 2022
McGrath, former editor of the New York Times Book Review, combines nostalgia and melancholy in this ode to summer and friendship. First as a child in slightly ramshackle cottages on the Massachusetts shore and then as an adult in his own tilting-toward-dilapidated vacation house, McGrath revels in the "syrupy slowness" of summer, a time beyond time when there "was nothing to do and nothing you were supposed to do." That changes dramatically, though, after McGrath meets Chip Gillespie, who lives nearby. An architect with the impish soul of Tom Sawyer, Chip schools his new friend in the art of summertime fun for adults. Yes, there are typical pursuits like sailing and golf, but even these are enjoyed in a refreshingly off-kilter manner (sailing small wooden boats, playing on rundown nine-hole golf courses). There's plenty of time, too, for firework follies, lobster--trapping fiascoes, and a chaotic form of dumpster diving. The fun, inevitably, is curtailed by mortality, but just as McGrath evokes summer pleasures with self-deprecating wit and without sloppy sentiment, he steers a course well away from the maudlin in recounting Chip's death from cancer.

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Starred review from April 11, 2022
A long friendship stirs a meditation on summertime in this tender elegy. New York Times writer McGrath revisits his bromance with Chip Gillespie, an architect who lived in the small Massachusetts town where McGrath and his family vacationed for many years; the relationship entailed much sailing, marathon rounds of golf, playing charades at parties, setting off firecrackers, and aimless breeze shooting (Q. “If you were on death row, what would you want as your last meal?” A. “You’re probably not going to feel like eating anyway”). He weaves in other reminiscences: boyhood idylls at his parents’ cottage; breaking into deserted Yale buildings with his wife, Nancy; going to the town dump; and finally, watching Chip succumb to cancer. McGrath’s prose unspools like a long summer day, full of excursions that set out in vague directions and arrive at delightful places brimming with exuberant sensations (On jumping off a bridge into a river: “hat long moment of free fall is both exhilarating and heart-thumpingly scary, and when... you... break through the surface, taking in a great, blessed breath of air, the feeling is one of indescribable relief”). Through his glowing, retrospective lens, McGrath captures life at its most carefree and meaningful.

April 23, 2022

Former deputy editor of The New Yorker and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, McGrath has written a debut memoir that takes the form of a series of interrelated reminiscences revolving around the theme of summer. The strongest parts of the book are about his father and family vacations at a cabin in rural Massachusetts. Here, McGrath really digs deep into his thoughts and feelings about family and the importance to him of the summer season. Less successful are the sections about the friend of the title, Chip. Though McGrath was clearly very fond of his friend, and McGrath's description of his friend's illness is moving, there is overall something superficial about how the friendship comes across on the page. We do not get a good sense of who Chip was and why he meant so much to McGrath. Interestingly, McGrath himself remarks at his difficulty at letting Chip know what his friendship really meant to him. Unfortunately, readers do not get much more of a sense of this either. VERDICT A readable, if slight, memoir about summer, family, and friendship.--Derek Sanderson

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