The Book of Summers - Emylia Hall

'I realized then that I'd tried so hard to forget the big things, that all the little things had gone too.'

Debut novelist Emylia Hall has taken inspiration from family holidays to rural Hungary during her childhood and woven these memories with her own imaginings to create a truly beautiful, heartfelt book.

In the novel, we meet Beth Lowe in the present day, living in London and working in an art gallery. Her father has come to visit her, and has brought with him a package for Beth that has been delivered to her back home in Devon. On opening it, and unwrapping The Book of Summers, she opens up the door to all the days of her past that she had buried away; 'As the years passed, and I strengthened my resolve, my childhood fell to time. And I drew a lid on it, as one might the contents of an old chest, pushed to the corner of an attic.' Through the photographs in the book that her mother Marika has collated, and which Beth now holds in her hands, she is drawn back once more to the memories of those summers she spent in Hungary as she grew from a girl to a young woman. 

We journey back in time with her through the recollections in her mind's eye, as she travels to Hungary with her parents for the first time; the Berlin Wall has fallen and her mother desires to see her native land once again. When they return home to Harkham, Devon, it is without Marika. And so Beth's time spent in Hungary begins. 

The author has captured the excitement and discovery first of childhood, where there is little fear and everything is there to be experienced, and then of adolesence, and the first feelings of love. The summers that Beth, then Erzsi, spent in Hungary with Marika, at Villa Serena, the house she shared with an artist. She has captured equally well the feelings of someone harbouring pain in their past; somewhere they can't revisit because of the intensity of feeling that has been locked away ever since the year Beth turned sixteen, and she left Hungary behind her. 'I know this much; the old hurts never go. In fact they're the things that shape us, they're the things we look to, when we turn out rough-shod, and messy at the edges.'

The thing that struck me the most as I began reading this novel is how beautiful the prose is, line after line. The author conjures up some gorgeous images. More than this, I felt that the author has captured life, captured human emotions; you can recognise parts of yourself here. And she has delivered such genuine truths about love, about families and relationships, and secrets and pain. I wish I could write like this. 

I was very moved by this story, and close to the end I cried. I found the author had awoken memories in myself of past times, some happy, some extremely sad. If a novelist succeeds in touching the heart of the reader in such a way, surely they have succeeded in what they set out to do. This is, amazingly, a first novel, and the author is young. I can't wait to read what comes next. I couldn't say more than if you're thinking of reading The Book of Summers - buy it, read it, enjoy the marvellous prose, return to the prologue and start it all again. 

5/5


Published by Headline Review on 1st March 2012


You can visit the author's blog here and her main website here.


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