Black Dog Summer, Miranda Sherry
Black Dog Summer, Miranda Sherry
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Black Dog Summer

Author: Miranda Sherry, Jilly Bond

Narrator: TBD

Unabridged: 9 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/18/2015


Synopsis

In this extraordinary debut novel reminiscent of The Lovely Bonesand Little Bee, a mother watches from the afterlife as her teenage daughter recovers amidst the startling dysfunction of her extended family.

Compulsively readable and stylistically stunning, Black Dog Summerbegins with a murder, a farmstead massacre, in the South African bush. Thirty-eight-year-old Sally is but one of the victims. Her life brutally cut short, she narrates from her vantage point in the afterlife and watches as her sister, Adele, her brother-in-law and unrequited love Liam, her niece Bryony, and her teenage daughter, Gigi, begin to make sense of the tragedy.

A suspenseful drama focusing on marriage and fidelity, sisterhood, and the fractious bond between mothers and daughters, Black Dog Summerasks: In the wake of tragedy, where does all that dark energy linger? The youngest characters, Bryony and Gigi, cousins who are now brought together after Sally's murder, are forced into sharing a bedroom. Bryony becomes confused and frightened by the violent energy stirred up and awakened by the massacre, while Gigi is unable to see beyond her deep grief and guilt. But they are not the only ones aware of the lurking darkness. Next door lives Lesedi, a reluctant witchdoctor who hides her mystical connection with the dead behind the façade of their affluent Johannesburg suburb.

As Gigi finally begins to emerge from her grief, the fragile healing process is derailed when she receives some shattering news, and in a mistaken effort to protect her cousin, puts Bryony's life in imminent danger. Now Sally must find a way to prevent her daughter from making a mistake that could destroy the lives of all who are left behind.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Colleen on February 18, 2015

Its an interesting story for sure, I haven't read many stories taking place in south africa. It kept my attention all the way through. That being said, I feel like the black characters are poorly written. The story seemed to rely on Black Africans being magic. Especially when the Jewish characters' r......more

Goodreads review by Natalie on January 07, 2015

I can't believe everyone is giving this five stars. I struggled to continue with this book to the end. Lovely Bones anyone? Stereotypical black characters anyone (witch doctor, maid, murdering thugs)?......more

Goodreads review by Roz on November 24, 2016

I must confess that I picked this book up more than once in the bookshop over a couple of months. I was curious, but... I was not really optimistic. Needless to say, I was pleasantly impressed. Black Dog Summer does a very good job of showing South Africa as it is today. The integration (yay! things......more

Goodreads review by iz✨ on March 26, 2022

2 stars This was 2 stars throughout - it had the potential to be a great read, with lovely prose, but nothing happened, it was told through flashbacks and was just generally boring - before what should have been a great ending that redeemed it a bit. And yes, the ending was decidedly more interesting......more

Goodreads review by Theresa on January 31, 2016

If an author is going to weave a tale involving a dead person watching the lives of the living and have it not seem like some kind of tired ghost story, she's got to write so well that the reader is willing to buy into the premise. Miranda Sherry succeeded, in my opinion. Her writing is evocative an......more