The Goodbye Summer

Jan Maxwell gives a pleasant reading as Gaffney's novel explores intergenerational relationships and life lessons shared by young and old. Maxwell gives an appropriately sweet tone to protagonist Caddie Winger, a young music teacher who cares for her eccentric grandmother, whom Maxwell characterizes with a gravelly smoker's voice. When "Nana" moves into an assisted living center, Caddie encounters residents who change her life. Through her relationships with a young engineer, an angel-voiced second mother, and a sharp-toned, cynical elderly man, Caddie experiences the deepest emotions, loves, and losses of her life. Maxwell approaches Caddie's highs and lows with vocalizations that ring true. J.J.B. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

April 19, 2004
No one can accuse Gaffney of shying away from mortality. Against the genteel backdrop of Wake House, a Maryland home for the elderly, Caddie Winger, a music teacher, endures a string of losses the summer she turns 33. In a way, it comes as no surprise, since most of her friends are nearly half a century older than she is. Caddie has always lived with her determinedly wacky grandmother, Nana, who moves into Wake House after she breaks a leg while working on one of her embarrassing lawn sculptures. Soon, Caddie is spending all her time at the small convalescent home and growing especially close to Thea, a firecracker who convinces Caddie to smoke pot and dance in the rain. Despite the fun they have together, the sober realities of old age are never far off, and Caddie's affair with a man her own age—disappearing slick-o Christopher—doesn't do much to cheer her up. The novel has its larkier moments, especially in the spirited, pitch-perfect conversations between Caddie and Nana and the sniping among Nana's fellow Wake House residents. But mostly Caddie suffers and struggles as Nana's ditziness looks more like dementia, money grows scarce, and she is plagued by crippling self-doubt. The redemptive romance, with 30-something Wake House resident Henry Magill, convalescing from a sky-diving accident that killed his fiancée, echoes the core love story in Gaffney's last novel, Flight Lessons
. Here, too, a damaged hero offers a profound attractiveness the reader recognizes ages ahead of the heroine. Caddie is endearing, and while some fans will cherish her fealty to her sorrows, others may feel more bummed than uplifted. Agent, Amy Berkower.
(May)

Forecast:
Fans who like a good weepie will appreciate this best, but look for Gaffney to match her usual numbers with the added help of a 10-city tour.

January 1, 2004
Caddie must make some hard decisions when her grandmother goes into a convalescent home. With a ten-city author tour.

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