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That Summer [Paperback]

Andrew Greig (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Faber and Faber; New edition edition (9 July 2001)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0571204732
  • ISBN-13: 978-0571204731
  • Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 1.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 92,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Andrew Greig
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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

Andrew Greig, prize-winning novelist and poet, dedicates his latest novel "to the vanishing generation"--all who lived through the Second World War and That Summer, the summer of 1940 and the Battle of Britain. It is a heartfelt and eloquent homage to them all, but there is no distant memorialising here. Instead, its chapters, narrated alternately in two voices, Len's and Stella's, speak with wonderful immediacy and tactility. The naive and eager, yet quietly thoughtful Len is a 22-year-old fighter pilot and Stella, a radio operator who, a year older, is marginally more worldly. As the battle in the air intensifies, Stella sits at her screen watching the little falling blips, and imagining the young Fraulein on the other side of the Channel who is "my twin, my sister, my mirror. My enemy who is not my enemy", and worries about the foolhardiness of loving in wartime.

But love they do, in spite of and because of the exhausting dread, the anticipation and waiting, the ordinariness and impermanence of those haunting, sun-filled months. Noisy, frenetic pubbing, dancing, creeping home through the blackout darkness fills the ragged time in between Len's almost daily sorties in his "Hurri": "I thought of my fierce excitement just before I killed, and my numbness once I had, and then like Stella I said out loud, "What are we becoming?" And death permeates their very air.

On the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, Andrew Greig has written a captivatingly memorable elegy; its language is alert and vivid and its emotional reach both rich and subtle. --Ruth Petrie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

'The Battle of Britain may be rightly regarded as the most famous air conflict in history but Greig has made it something much more important for a generation now almost unimaginably removed: he has made it real... That Summer is an extraordinary achievement that deserves to have Greig, after several impressive novels, promoted to the ranks of the highest-regarded writers.' Anthea Lawson, The Times
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
By Smithy
Format:Paperback
I read “That Summer” by Andrew Greig just over a year ago now and it still haunts me. This is a beautiful, beautiful book which adeptly recaptures a time which has long since passed. Told in the first person narrative of the two central characters, a young RAF Hurricane pilot and his girlfriend, Greig’s novel has an immediacy which is truly spellbinding. The characters come alive to the reader with their thoughts, fears and feelings, and through this Greig makes this remote time become present. The humanity of the protagonists makes them far more accessible and “real”.

It is a poignant story but not in a weak way, indeed it is a powerfully moving book and one which will bring a tear to the eye of the most hardened reader. “That Summer” is a beautiful evocation of the turbulent summer of 1940 and one which highlights the common threads which make us human, regardless of time.

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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I finished this book this morning and have been drifting through today haunted by the images, still involved with Stella and Len, and with Maddy and Tad, still moved by the beautiful sadness of it all.There is an awful inevitability that traps the characters, the war which unremittingly takes its victims, but despite this, the love story of Len and Stella opens, flowers and deepens, and just captures the reader, so that at the close, as you look back over the years, and rummage in the hat box of Stella's memorabilia, glancing at the "silver-framed photo, gathering dust and glances through the years", the letters and the diaries, the people and the moments in time they represent, it all feels almost a part of your own life. Read and be moved.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Andrew Greig's excellent and moving novel tells the story of the relationship between an RAF pilot and a RDF ground-controller during the summer of the Battle of Britain (1940). As with all the best stories, it is far more than just this. Greig's novel looks at how we (the contemporary reader) view the past and, interestingly, how the past views us: how people in WW2 looked to the future, and imagined the world after the war: what it would be like; what they hoped it would be like.

'That Summer' is a love story (the most heart-breaking I have read in a long time) full of joy and pathos, subtle, beautifully crafted. Greig successfully evokes a time which for some readers will be very far from their world, and in evoking this time, he allows us to see some of its secrets. Always, though, it is marked off as a separate, and very special place.

The narrative frequently shifts between different first-person narratives (each of the lovers narrates different sections) and sometimes to a third-person, authorial voice, and through each of these voices Greig explores the hearts and minds of his characters. And I was left with the feeling that 'That Summer' was a novel about what it means to live - to enjoy life, while it is there, against all odds.

Although set during the Second World War, Greig's work is fiercely contemporary, and far from nostalgic. It is a novel that it is difficult not to be impressed by: compelling, thoughtful, inspiring and ultimately intensely, intensely sad.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
moving, engaging - a fine tribute to the Few and those who loved them
This has just become one of my favourite books of all time. Although i have just finished reading it, i feel i will never forget it. Read more
Published 26 days ago by markr
A moving and memorable read
As my title suggests, I think 'That Summer' stays in your mind long after finishing it. The characters are balanced, well drawn and interesting, the period detail is accurate and... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Mr J S
Ten summers fade
Ten summers cannot fade this book. It is beautiful as the passage of time.

Andrew Greig is surely the finest writer in Scotland today. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Clinterty
Evocative
I enjoyed reading this book. It is well written and I felt very much part of the period and involved in the lives of the two main characters. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Tricia
Marvellous
I have bought and given away five copies of this book. One of my favourites. The last couple of pages make sense of the bewilderment of our parents facing life after WW2.
Published on 17 Mar 2010 by Tj Simpson
take your time
An excellent book, however it does become quite confusing who is writing the book as it seams to be a collection of diaries. Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2009 by Mr. A. Clifton-holt
Poor - didnt finish it
I eventually gave up with this book. The writing style meant that I had no idea who each chapter was talking about until halfway down the page... Read more
Published on 11 Aug 2009 by Mr. Dave Eyes
Engaging and vivid
I don't recall how this ended up on my shelf but decided to try it as a change from my recent run of fast paced stories one can pick up and put down in the midst of a frantic... Read more
Published on 19 Oct 2008 by Justin
Just beautiful!
The immediacy of life during the Battle of Britain springs vividly from the pages of this beautifully narrated book. Read more
Published on 28 July 2008 by Lance Mitchell
One of those books you just have to read
I think I bought this book one day with many others - not really paying attention to it - but as I read a lot of historical fiction I thought I would give it a go. Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2008 by Charlotte
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