Summer Reading, Hilma Wolitzer
Summer Reading, Hilma Wolitzer
List: $21.95 | Sale: $15.37
Club: $10.97

Summer Reading

Author: Hilma Wolitzer

Narrator: Isabel Keating

Unabridged: 7 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook (DRM Protected)

Published: 11/01/2010

Categories: Fiction, Women, Family Life

Synopsis

Summer Reading is the story of three women whose disparate lives intersect in the Hamptons. Lissy Snyder, a beautiful and emotionally needy newlywed, is the unwilling stepmother of her husband's hostile children. Her eavesdropping housecleaner, Michelle, a local, is resentful of the moneyed arrogance of the vacationing "invaders" and can't get a commitment from her fisherman boyfriend. Solitary, bookish Angela Graves, leader of the Page Turners, a book group attended by wealthy young summer residents, harbors the shameful memory of a disastrous affair she had long ago. Over the summer, Angela encourages her book group to identify with the heroines of novels by Trollope, Flaubert, and Charlotte Brontë. But can reading, as she proposes, really influence the choices people make and even change the course of their lives?

About Hilma Wolitzer

Hilma Wolitzer is the author of several novels, including Hearts, Ending, and Tunnel of Love. She is the recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award. She has taught at the University of Iowa, New York University, and Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

About Isabel Keating

Isabel Keating has earned several AudioFile Earphones Awards for her audiobook narration and twice been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. As an actress, she garnered a Drama Desk Award, Theatre World Award, and a Tony nomination for her critically acclaimed 2004 Broadway performance as Judy Garland in The Boy from Oz. She was awarded the Helen Hayes Award for Best Actress in 2000 for her portrayal of Flora Crewe in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Suzanne on July 14, 2007

More serious in tone than Karen Joy Fowler's bookclub novel, but asks unflinchingly about the role of literature in our lives. How's that for light summer reading? And yet it is. Not overlong, not overserious and kept me up late to finish it. Privileged women meet & lives intersect with the book clu......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on April 28, 2008

There has been a lot of books written lately that have you reading about reading itself, and that explore the idea that there is a greater purpose behind the books we read. "The Jane Austen Book Club", "The Thirteenth Tale" are just the first two such books that come to my mind. "Summer Reading" giv......more

Goodreads review by Stephanie on July 29, 2010

Comparisons with The Jane Austen Book Club are probably going to run throughout the reviews, so I will keep it to a minimum and say that this book, while similar in what it is trying to do (weave together the lives of characters through books), is done in a completely different manner. I thought thi......more

Goodreads review by Lisa on February 18, 2016

I'm not going to lie. I thought this was going to be closer to a cheese puff book than a roast beef book. Not too far from the end, it got me in the gut and made me cry. This is multi-layered, has multiple narrators (which I really like), and tells the stories of what could be real people. Thoroughl......more

Quotes

“A Hampton vacation, trophy wives and characters who dig books…Bring on the beach chair.” People

Keen observation and a deft use of language…an enjoyable read that ends with what all good readers seek—another ‘to-read’ list.  The Charlotte Observer

“Eminently readable and precisely accomplished…fine and complex and very much the product of skilled workmanship.” The East Hampton Star

“Summer Reading is ultimately a homage to storytelling and the blessings that good literature can bestow.” The Southhampton Press

“Lives of the main characters take on the very crises and high emotion dramatized in literature. What a delight!” AudioFile

“Wolitzer’s subtle analysis reveals the underlying hopes and tensions that guide each woman’s daily life as she struggles to come to terms with her own choices and mistakes, led, in part, by the heroines of the books Angela has chosen.” Booklist

“Wolitzer manages to wrest originality from the jaws of cliché with this sharply observed, multi-voiced novel.” Kirkus

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