My Summer of Love - Softcover

Cross, Helen.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747559198 ISBN 13: 9780747559191

Publisher: BCA, 2002

Synopsis

It's 1984 and one of the hottest summers Yorkshire's seen. It's the kind of woozy heat to lose your mind in. Mona is fifteen years old. She's a drinker, a thief and a fruit machine addict. Things are already going badly in the pub where she lives with her obese step-brother PorkChop. But when Mona meets posh Tamsin Fakenham, a sassy girl with beautiful breasts, an actress mother and a sister who's died of starvation, things very quickly get much worse.

About this title

Review:

In her debut novel, My Summer of Love, Helen Cross has crafted a highly original and often shocking tale of two 15-year-olds spending one long, hot summer together. Mona is a heavy drinker, a fruit-machine addict and aspiring criminal, while Tamsin is a spoilt, rich girl, living in her parents' luxurious country home on the posh side of town. Although hailing from opposite ends of the social spectrum, both girls are victims of parental break-ups as well as, it would seem, suffering recent bereavements. When Tamsin's parents are away, Mona moves in and together the girls embark upon a wild relationship that is both beautifully romantic and shockingly violent. Set against the backdrop of a Yorkshire town in 1984, the text is seasoned with well-chosen motifs of the period: references to the miners' strike, the fear of nuclear attack, New Romantic fashions and the spectre of a serial killer on the loose.

It is this authenticity and humanity that separates this novel from other familiar coming-of-age tales. While novels covering this ground are often refracted through a lens of cosy, middle-aged nostalgia, My Summer of Love doesn't flinch from communicating the sheer awfulness of the girls' antics. As disturbing as the denouement is, the whole story is shot through with a black humour that, while not diminishing the sense of horror, conveys the teenage condition in all its embarrassing absurdity. Mona's obsession with removing bodily hair, Tamsin's weird culinary concoctions and their drunken attempts at dancing all rekindle cringe-inducing recollections of that period in your lives. Disturbing and funny in equal measure, Cross has succeeded in creating two vibrant and distinctive characters who linger in our memory long after the last page has been read. --Jane Morris

Review:

'A hand grenade of a novel Cross depicts a world every bit as shocking, and as violent, as the one Anthony Burgess created in A Clockwork Orange' Daily Mail 'A sharp, disturbing and highly original debut novel' Sunday Mirror 'Energetic and blackly comic' The Times 'This is the book to namedrop and a gripping read it is too Dark, intelligent and superbly written. Prepare to be seduced and shocked' Glamour --various

About this edition

• Publisher: BCA
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0747559198
• ISBN 13: 9780747559191
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256