A Summer of Drowning
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Review
`A beautiful and haunting book...A charming and deeply imaginative novel.' --Aesthetica
`Lyrical in his descriptions on the land of the midnight sun' --Daily Mail
`Burnside's prose has been frequently praised for its clarity, poetic sonority and fine cadences. It is certainly so here ... A Summer of Drowning marries philosophical meditation with the gooseflesh verve of a thriller' --Scotland on Sunday
'It's very, very rare for a writer to be equally good at poems and novels. John Burnside is. He's a brilliant poet, a brilliant memoirist, and a brilliant novelist ... There are, says Liv, "two kinds of seeing". One is about finding "what we have always been told is there". The other is about going "out alone in the world", like "a boy going out into the fields, or along the shore" who finds that "something creeps in at the edge of his vision". John Burnside is breathtakingly good at both' --The Independent
`The most defining aspect of Burnside's work aside from its linguistic exactness is the beauty of his prose. Quite simply, he is a wonderful writer. Whatever he is writing always seems real and, considering much of the content of this new novel, that is a considerable asset for any storyteller' --Irish Times
`memorable, atmospheric and compelling' --TLS
`Burnside allows the ambiguity to remain in a hauntingly memorable book.' --Sunday Times
`The novel invites you to view storytelling as akin to madness...In a book that often makes coded reference to itself to provoke serious thought as to what fiction is about, this counts as a joke. Its evasions may discomfit those who like to know exactly where they stand, but those who enjoy being teased as well as spooked should relish an eerie, ethereal novel that alludes to Lewis Carroll and uses methods of Hitchcock and David Lynch' --Daily Telegraph
`In this beautifully sustained novel madness, mystery and myth-making collide. Burnside has an eerie attunement to the ineffable nature of existence and the fictions we construct to navigate and explain it' --Financial Times
`Burnside is an accomplished and careful writer. And this is a beautiful book, compelling and strange.'
--The Times
`Unsettling, hauntingly memorable tale.' --The Sunday Times
`Written with deceptive elegance, riddled with gaps and non sequiturs and a clever travesty of several genres, this is a disturbing, provocative book'. --The Guardian
`Lyrical in his descriptions on the land of the midnight sun' --Daily Mail
`Burnside's prose has been frequently praised for its clarity, poetic sonority and fine cadences. It is certainly so here ... A Summer of Drowning marries philosophical meditation with the gooseflesh verve of a thriller' --Scotland on Sunday
'It's very, very rare for a writer to be equally good at poems and novels. John Burnside is. He's a brilliant poet, a brilliant memoirist, and a brilliant novelist ... There are, says Liv, "two kinds of seeing". One is about finding "what we have always been told is there". The other is about going "out alone in the world", like "a boy going out into the fields, or along the shore" who finds that "something creeps in at the edge of his vision". John Burnside is breathtakingly good at both' --The Independent
`The most defining aspect of Burnside's work aside from its linguistic exactness is the beauty of his prose. Quite simply, he is a wonderful writer. Whatever he is writing always seems real and, considering much of the content of this new novel, that is a considerable asset for any storyteller' --Irish Times
`memorable, atmospheric and compelling' --TLS
`Burnside allows the ambiguity to remain in a hauntingly memorable book.' --Sunday Times
`The novel invites you to view storytelling as akin to madness...In a book that often makes coded reference to itself to provoke serious thought as to what fiction is about, this counts as a joke. Its evasions may discomfit those who like to know exactly where they stand, but those who enjoy being teased as well as spooked should relish an eerie, ethereal novel that alludes to Lewis Carroll and uses methods of Hitchcock and David Lynch' --Daily Telegraph
`In this beautifully sustained novel madness, mystery and myth-making collide. Burnside has an eerie attunement to the ineffable nature of existence and the fictions we construct to navigate and explain it' --Financial Times
`Burnside is an accomplished and careful writer. And this is a beautiful book, compelling and strange.'
--The Times
`Unsettling, hauntingly memorable tale.' --The Sunday Times
`Written with deceptive elegance, riddled with gaps and non sequiturs and a clever travesty of several genres, this is a disturbing, provocative book'. --The Guardian
Book Description
A terrifying and dream-like new novel from one of our greatest contemporary writers.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Totally engrossing story deep into the thoughts, feelings, sensings of a young solitary Norwegian woman living in a remote island in the far north. Ostensibly it's a story about a number of tragic events that occurred in summer in the insomnia-inducing time of midnight sun, but these actually play a more peripheral role than you might imagine. This is no Nordic crime thriller, but a much deeper exploration of psyche and perception.
It's set in a hallucinatory, dreamlike environment and the story reflects these qualities too. Everything is told from the viewpoint of the girl, Liv, with few outside anchors to corroborate her, so the atmosphere is both unsettling and claustrophobic. It's difficult to be sure of what we are told and at times almost everything seems uncertain. Are these criminal events? Is it the fantasy of a too solitary and isolated girl? Is it a descent into madness? Are supernatural events occurring?
Some of the descriptions are extremely intense, particularly of the landscape in the midnight sun or middnattsol with its "white nights", and of the interactions from time to time with other people. The language is beautiful and there's a real atmosphere conjured up of magic and claustrophobia. Liv seems extremely perceptive, able to sense with uncanny accuracy what others are thinking and feeling, why they behave as they do, what they will do next, almost before they do themselves. It's actually quite a shock then when her perceptiveness seems to fail her on a key rare occasion.
This is a great novel but I'm slightly in two minds about recommending it. It won't be for everyone. First, if you're looking for a crime story this is not it. Second, it can be unsettling, possibly disturbing, to read, mainly due to the very intense and confined viewpoint. However it is different and feels very fresh, brilliantly written, set in a fascinating landscape, with a dreamlike atmosphere. It benefits from some active thinking as you're reading it rather than just absorbing the story (is the best way I can describe it). If any of this appeals to you, then give it a try. It is very special and may even haunt your dreams for a while.
It's set in a hallucinatory, dreamlike environment and the story reflects these qualities too. Everything is told from the viewpoint of the girl, Liv, with few outside anchors to corroborate her, so the atmosphere is both unsettling and claustrophobic. It's difficult to be sure of what we are told and at times almost everything seems uncertain. Are these criminal events? Is it the fantasy of a too solitary and isolated girl? Is it a descent into madness? Are supernatural events occurring?
Some of the descriptions are extremely intense, particularly of the landscape in the midnight sun or middnattsol with its "white nights", and of the interactions from time to time with other people. The language is beautiful and there's a real atmosphere conjured up of magic and claustrophobia. Liv seems extremely perceptive, able to sense with uncanny accuracy what others are thinking and feeling, why they behave as they do, what they will do next, almost before they do themselves. It's actually quite a shock then when her perceptiveness seems to fail her on a key rare occasion.
This is a great novel but I'm slightly in two minds about recommending it. It won't be for everyone. First, if you're looking for a crime story this is not it. Second, it can be unsettling, possibly disturbing, to read, mainly due to the very intense and confined viewpoint. However it is different and feels very fresh, brilliantly written, set in a fascinating landscape, with a dreamlike atmosphere. It benefits from some active thinking as you're reading it rather than just absorbing the story (is the best way I can describe it). If any of this appeals to you, then give it a try. It is very special and may even haunt your dreams for a while.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I read the reviews of John Burnside's A Summer of Drowning, I knew I had to read it.
It conveyed the atmosphere of what it must be like to live so far north, where daylight is endless. The sense of place, and the atmosphere of the 'uncanny' and mystery are excellent. I've been left thinking about it and trying to put logic on it - I think that it will live on in my mind.
Very evocative and beautiful, and I very much recommend it.
It conveyed the atmosphere of what it must be like to live so far north, where daylight is endless. The sense of place, and the atmosphere of the 'uncanny' and mystery are excellent. I've been left thinking about it and trying to put logic on it - I think that it will live on in my mind.
Very evocative and beautiful, and I very much recommend it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I would have given this five stars, but for the completely misleading blurb on the back cover. As others have mentioned, the blurb suggests that this will be something Wallander-esque, and I have to say that this is why I picked it up. It's nothing at all like that, but I still really enjoyed it, as I am fascinated by solitary people, creative people, introverted people, and this story definitely explores this type of personality in an extremely remote setting.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Struggling
Love Burnside , however the occasional novel becomes a struggle . Difficult to identify why , too descriptive , a little plodding ? Read more
Published 26 days ago by Bahuni
Masterful
This novel, shortlisted for the 2011/12 Costa (Whitbread) Novel Prize, is a masterful one. It is set in the far (and sparsely populated) north of Norway, with "midnight sun"... Read more
Published 4 months ago by H. C. Merritt
Could have been so much more
This has the makings of a great tale. Setting? Northern Norway. During summer. Great, I think, I know nothing about up there, this should be good. Plot? Read more
Published 5 months ago by J. Reynolds
Spooky and tense but I never really connected with it
"A Summer of Drowning" is a book in which for much of the time not a lot happens - but always spookily. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Ripple
'the keeper of the illusion'
With his last couple of novels Burnside has been moving into some interesting territory, using folk tale and fable to infuse his narratives with the very essence of storytelling. Read more
Published 12 months ago by William Rycroft
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