FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Summer Point
by Linda McNutt
Cormorant Books, 157 pp.Everybody has a place that upon entering instantly transports them back to childhood. Suddenly old fears arise and old comforts surface. For some it may be the experience of a hot, dust-filled farmhouse or a musty, weathered schoolhouse. For Sarah in Linda McNutt's first novel, Summer Point, the place is her grandmother's cottage on New Brunswick's Northumberland Strait; a place that she has now inherited. This inheritance causes feelings of incompetence and anxiety in Sarah, especially when her father or great-aunts would have been a more likely choice.
Summer Point begins with Sarah's return to Indian Point to close the cottage for the winter. She brings along her new boyfriend, who like most partners knows the dates and places of her childhood, but not the details. Rather than using numerous flashbacks interspersed with present time, McNutt's chapters reflect a series of separate yet connected tales of Sarah's childhood. While reading about her life, readers can't help but remember chapters of their own youth.
The characters seem eccentric at the outset, but "the aunts" or Uncle K. are familiar to everyone. McNutt's descriptions of the monotonous afternoon teas with the aunts bring back recollections of neverending "adult" visits in stagnant homes, complete with too many rules and not enough toys.
It becomes clear that Sarah's grandmother has made a wise choice. More than she knows, Sarah needs the cottage and all that it holds as a foundation for her adult life. Sarah - like most people - is trying to be a grown-up, but is inescapably connected to a younger self. Being surrounded by these reflections gives her a point of reality from which to judge her life and the people within it.
Summer Point is a cathartic journey well worth the trip.
Janet Kawchuk
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