What Dies in Summer By Tom Wright. Canongate, 284pp. £12.99
BEFORE MOBILE PHONES and iPods descended upon mankind, a teenage world of long, hot Julys and swimming pools apparently existed, as it does in Tom Wright’s earnest, at times shocking, debut, What Dies in Summer.
Set in Texas, the book has the feel of less consumerist times; it could well be the 1960s. The women carry purses, but there is surprisingly little period detail. What there is, though, is plenty of description of the bodies of young girls. These descriptions fall into two categories: girls as the stuff of a young boy’s fantasies; and girls as corpses to be studied by murder-investigation teams.
Young Jim, the narrator, lives with his grandmother because his mother’s boyfriend, Jack, a boxer of sorts and an all-round thug, is dangerous and has often beaten him. One “friendly” sparring session lands the boy in hospital, adding to his medical history of similar injuries.
Jim’s self-absorbed mother is not too nice, either; given to heavy drinking and erratic behaviour, she had a difficult relationship with the boy’s father, another heavy drinker, now dead. Wright imposes everything on a coming-of-age narrative voice that does not convince. Here is a character who repeatedly compares females to cats and, on opening a hotel bedroom door to his girlfriend (her parents in the next room), enthuses: “Her snug jeans demonstrated her body in a way that almost vapour-locked my mind.” No kidding.
Much earlier in the novel, Jim reveals that he has second sight. Aside from a recurring dream featuring a dead girl, though, there is little to suggest that his gift adds up to much. Jim is naive – not that there is anything wrong with that – but he is also knowing in a particularly irritating way. “I did what I did, and that’s on me,” he announces in the opening line. It may seem a good way to begin a novel, but by the end the reader is left wondering what exactly it was that Jim did.
The truth is that, aside from arriving on time at a crucial moment (albeit the one we have been expecting), Jim is rather passive, while the action quickly develops into that of a formulaic sex-abuse thriller.
The prose, despite the literary flourishes in the descriptions of young female bodies, is leaden, and at the book’s core (heart is not quite the word) festers a disgusting crime that turns out to be the third in a series.
Experienced thriller readers will spot all the clues, which are marked with the zealous clarity of German road signs. Wright leaves nothing to chance in a narrative peopled by unusually damaged individuals. Partially in charge is Gram, a wise old matriarch who finds herself not only raising one daughter’s son – Jim, the narrator – but also, as the novel opens, providing for another grandchild, Jim’s cousin, the enigmatic and deeply troubled Lee Ann, more often referred to as LA. Jim is very fond of her, and at times this affection becomes sexualised.
Luckily, he also lusts after her close friend, Diana, who becomes his girlfriend. Their romance is predictably self-conscious.
But that is not the only problem. Gram expresses herself with more certainty, and correctness, than most college professors – although her education is referred to, it is never explained – and she has a ready store of references, biblical and otherwise. Even more improbable is Dr Kepler, a dying intellectual who bluntly informs Jim, “You would like to have sex with Diana,” and provides him with condoms for the purpose. Why would a dying elderly woman keep a supply of condoms on hand?
Gram concedes that her dead husband, another heavy drinker, is responsible for the mess her two grown daughters, the interchangeable characters Leah and Rachel, are in. Meanwhile, the killer’s identity is all but screaming from the pages.
Wright is a clinical psychotherapist, and the writing is at its most comfortable when concerned with the darker aspects of human behaviour.
By far the most interesting character is the remote LA, who sleeps within a wall of pillows. One of the stronger sequences is about a fishing trip that unintentionally upsets a mother bear. Yet, even here, Wright shows no natural flair for dialogue. Again, a seasoned thriller reader will question the speed with which the police investigators make their first decision. Obvious comparisons will be made with superior work, such as Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River (2001), or with the internationally successful and overrated The Lovely Bones (2002). The great theme of betrayed innocence has often been explored so much more effectively than here.
There is diffidence in the telling; it is as if Wright is simply uncomfortable with fiction writing. His description of LA’s private hell just about shores up a tone-deaf, slightly didactic and irredeamably humourless beach read that, even at its best, is seldom better than average, sustained as it is by the evils humans do.
EILEEN BATTERSBYis Literary Correspondent
