Tome Raider: Summer Sisters

In her book “Summer Sisters,” Judy Blume—best known for her well-loved children’s books such as “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”—delivers a decidedly un-childlike novel that centers around a twenty-year friendship between two distinctly different women.

The book is undoubtedly guilty: its pages are filled with men and sex (both lesbian and heterosexual).

Yet “Summer Sisters” maintains the veneer of respectability through its nods to such literary staples as character development and, amidst the sex, the uncovering of real emotion.

The story starts out in the traditional boy-meets-girl soap opera vein, but with a twist. In this case, it’s girl meets girl.

Victoria (“Vix”) is a shy yet smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks. Caitlin is wealthy, stunningly beautiful, wild, and, of course, troubled. They meet in the late 1970s at age 12, and Caitlin invites Vix into her spacious house and luxurious life in Martha’s Vineyard, worlds away from the squalid trailer in New Mexico that Vix calls home.

Caitlin and Vix become instant friends, signing a “Never Be Ordinary” pact, and thus ensuring from the start that the book will never be boring. They go back each summer to the Vineyard, where Caitlin strings Vix along. Caitlin is manipulative, but ultimately she needs Vix as a rock to ground her own manic moods. For Vix, Caitlin is like a drug; dangerous yet incredibly tempting, one snort and Vix is hooked yet again.

Sex is an instant obsession of the girls. Caitlin and Vix start off experimenting with one another, move on to having sex with two handsome local boys in later summers, and finally, competing for the same man’s attentions.

But then again, this book is guilty for a reason. The overtone of sex, if not the actual act, makes up the majority of the book.

What separates “Summer Sisters” from the genre of pure romance novels—with their similar emphasis on sex—is Blume’s ability to capture the character development that happens over time. The book follows Vix and Caitlin through their teens and into adulthood as they go down very separate paths in life.

As a plus for Harvard students, and in a part of the book that I reread once I got here, Vix herself goes to Harvard. Blume certainly did her homework on Harvard life. Vix lives in Weld and then Leverett House and even takes the class “Justice.”

As she grows up, Vix must decide whether Caitlin—so instrumental to her own development yet so casually hurtful—is worth the pain of maintaining contact.

“Summer Sisters” lures you in from the start. The book’s short, conversational prose reads like a magazine article, and the plot twists, filled with sex and betrayal, will keep you utterly engrossed; the hours will pass until the thick books lies thumbed through in front of you.

The novel is written in short chapters and is told mainly from Vix’s point of view, but it is interspersed with the first person perspectives of other characters, both minor and major. You are thus privy to the horny inner monologues of teenage boys, the relationship worries of the parents, and even the sex-obsessed mind of older women (perhaps a reflection of Blume’s own consciousness). This writing style makes you feel as if you have consumed an entire feast of gossip, whispered directly and confidentially into your ear.

While many Harvard students may feel embarrassed reading a book that is so blatantly un-intellectual, “Summer Sisters” is a welcome respite from the dry material in the course packs that we read on a daily basis.

There is a reason that “Summer Sisters” stayed on The New York Times bestsellers list for five months—it truly is the perfect combination of pleasure served with just enough, but not too much, guilt.

Summer Sisters
By Judy Blume
Dell
Out Now