The Book of Summers

April 30, 2012
Hall’s lovely and haunting debut novel follows Beth Lowe, a young Englishwoman, as she recalls languid summers spent in Hungary with her mother, Marika, and the betrayal that cast every brilliant season into shadow. After a family trip to Hungary in 1990 when Beth was nine, her mother suddenly announced her intention to stay, rending the family across loyalties and country lines. Each year after the split, Beth spent summers with Marika, until a secret comes to light that impels Beth to turn her back on Hungary and her mother. Years later, Beth’s estranged father arrives with a letter explaining that Marika is dead and has left Beth a scrapbook, a heartrending record of the summers Beth spent with Marika and Tamás, Beth’s adolescent amour. Confronted with the evidence of former joys, Beth must decide whether to embrace the past in light of pain, or forever cast it aside. Each character feels authentic, and Hall does a superb job of balancing their stories. Set against the lush Hungarian countryside, one of “forest pool” and “sad poetry,” Beth’s bittersweet story will entrance readers. Agent: Rowan Lawton, PFD (UK).

June 1, 2012
A young woman confronts her magical, tragic past when she receives a scrapbook of the summers spent with her estranged mother. Despite working in the London art world, Beth Lowe lives a reserved life. She sees her father (a mere shadow of a man) on occasion, but hasn't spoken to her mother in 15 years. Then a package arrives, a handmade scrapbook marked The Book of Summers. Tucked inside is a note from her mother's longtime lover Zoltan, informing Beth that her mother has died. She grabs the album and heads to the park to recall memories she banished as a teenager. Her quiet English father and wild Hungarian mother seemed an odd pair, but 9-year-old Erzsi (the Hungarian of Elizabeth) is a happy child excited about the family vacation to Hungary, the first time Marika has been back since she escaped as a girl. But on vacation, the incomprehensible happens: Marika decides to stay and sends David and little Erzsi back home to England. Her mother's abandonment is almost too much to take, and Erzsi pines for letters and phone calls as her home life with her father (tea and detective shows) becomes unbearably gray. But then summer comes, and Erzsi is allowed to visit her mother. Marika and artist Zoltan live in a country house dominated by art and laughter and nature--a bohemian counterpart to the lonesome domesticity of Erzsi's English life. Down the road lives Tamas, a boy Erzsi's age, who shows her the pool in the forest, a touchstone for her subsequent stays. Every year she returns to Marika and their Hungarian summers and falls in love anew. Hall nicely captures a girl's adolescence, as Erzsi waits all year to bloom under the Hungarian sun, under her mother's care. At 16 Erzsi begs her mother to let her stay in Hungary. It is then that Marika tells her the truth: It's a heartbreaking rewriting of history. A poignant tale of a daughter strung between two parents and of the kind of silence and secrets that destroy families.

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May 15, 2012
When her parents separate, nine-year-old Erzsebet, Erzsi for short, is pulled between two worlds, those of the quiet routines she and her father share in Britain and of the shimmering weeks she spends each summer in Hungary with her mercurial mother, Marika. Hall tells her protagonist's story in flashbacks as adult Erzsi, now called Beth, receives a scrapbook (the titular Book of Summers) from Marika that revives long-suppressed memories of seven cherished visits with her mother before they came to a painful halt. As Erzsi relives each summer, readers watch her blossom from a tentative young girl into a confident young woman experiencing the blush of first love. It is closeness with Marika that she most craves, and her life revolves around the handful of days each year when she basks in her mother's attention. From the opening chapter, readers know a break between the two is inevitable, but the reason for it is still both surprising and devastating. In her thoroughly enchanting debut, Hall casts a spell with this coming-of-age tale that feels, as Erzsi says, like magic caught and held. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)