Speaking of Summer

June 1, 2019
Buckhanon's fourth novel (Solemn, 2016, etc.) charts a tumultuous year in the life of a black woman whose mother has died and twin sister has vanished. It's 2015, and a grieving Autumn Spencer loses her grip on her professional and personal lives as she searches for her missing sister, Summer. While the novel explores issues of race, gender, and violence with nuance, too often awkward prose distracts from the story's gravity. At times it can be hard to believe that Autumn, a 34-year-old Midwestern transplant to Harlem, is a savvy freelance marketer and website wordsmith given the book's odd narration. At one point, Autumn describes the people who've helped her as having "emerged in my time of need as suddenly as a cold sore, in unpredictable sequence and bulk," a peculiar simile for a group of supporters. Her descent into financial insecurity is convincing as she loses clients while she's obsessing over Summer, but other storylines lack emotional resonance. Much of the novel unfolds in Autumn's disembodied thoughts, untethered from time and space, rather than in concrete scenes, especially early on. The story's main characters rarely interact in real time. Buckhanon reserves flashbacks for a particular moment in Autumn's childhood after the death of her father, but these too occur mostly in overview. These structural choices sacrifice clarity for the sake of suspense. The story does open up about halfway through with a crucial revelation that allows for more satisfying novelistic scenes and conflicts. Buckhanon understands the complexities of trauma. Her portrait of Autumn's grief, fragmented memories, and inner turmoil all synthesize current scientific research on how people cope with traumatic experiences and might seek to heal. Unfortunately, a somewhat clumsy chase for mystery overshadows the accurate portrayal of one woman's struggles with mental health.

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July 1, 2019

It's been months since Autumn Spencer's twin sister, Summer, disappeared from the roof of their Harlem brownstone without a trace. Frustrated with what she sees as a lack of interest in her sister's case and worried that Summer will become another statistic, Autumn launches a one-woman crusade to figure out what happened. As she searches for Summer, Autumn fixates on news of a local serial killer and other stories of black women forgotten and abused, and her life quickly spirals out of control. Before long, the obsession is taking over, and she starts sleeping in her sister's bed and with her sister's boyfriend. The situation forces Autumn to confront uncomfortable truths until one day the reality of Summer's disappearance nearly crushes her. Broken into four seasons, the narrative begins in winter and is a slow build. Buckhanon's (Upstate) tale hits its stride sometime during the spring and doesn't slow down until the fall wrap-up. There is a frenetic and abstract quality to the writing, but it matches the state of mind of the unreliable narrator. VERDICT Readers looking for contemporary suspense with a social justice twist will appreciate the storytelling.--Vicki Briner, Broomfield, CO

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2019
What do you do when your twin, your other half, disappears, and no one seems to notice? Autumn Spencer remembers the bewildering night when her sister, Summer, vanished off a snowy Harlem apartment rooftop, leaving only one set of footprints. Three months later, Summer appears to have been forgotten by her ex-boyfriend, their neighbors, and the police. With the help of one sympathetic detective, Autumn attempts to reconstruct the past, sorting through diaries, photos, and artwork to solve a mystery that reaches back to a childhood trauma. Autumn is following Summer, or is Summer fleeing Autumn? Buckhanon (Solemn, 2016) captures Autumn's frustration at the undervaluing of black women, accompanied by the creeping gentrification of her Harlem neighborhood. Not only are individual Black women disappearing, so are the communities that keep them safe. Autumn muses on the importance of mutual support: Did it make me racist that I'd throw the oxygen mask to a young sister across the aisle before I passed it to the senior white woman in the middle seat next to me? Yet it is Buckhanon's elegant images of grief that most captivate. To Autumn, her lost sister's shoes appeared desperate to be worn again, waiting by the door in fidelity like loyal pets, shaped in time to their owner's still-missing person. Devastating.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)