The Summer You Were There

This review, whilst short, took much longer to pen than you would think. My eyes kept getting flooded, all because of the unadulterated emotion bound within this book. Go read it.

The Summer You Were There is potentially one of the most impactful works of art I have ever experienced. The actual review of this literature is short, because the story beautifully presented across the pages is just too painful to recall. It is a story of the deepest possible loss. The way in which it has been written is exemplary. From the first chapter of the first volume, I knew this story was not going to have a happy ending; I knew I would feel immensely sad by the end. Even the volume covers told this story. Yet the way the narrative was constructed pulled me along all the way. The way in which the author has conveyed such raw, deep emotion is unlike any other literary work I have read. With every turn of the page I prepared myself for the worst. And as predicted, the harrowing ending felt like a punch to the gut. I never knew a work of art could evoke such strong despair in me.

Regarding the epilogue, I do now know what the author aimed to convey; it contradicts the afterword. To me it was absolutely devastating, more so than even the final scene. A 21 year old who has resigned herself to live as a widow to her first love. It paints such a sorrowful, pessimistic picture. And on one hand I blame the author for weaving something so grim and lacking hope, but on the other hand it elevates this work of art even higher. Even at the very end, this book refuses to make you feel good or hopeful. Even at the very end, this book shows how utterly devastating death is.

And, I think for the first time in my life, I have felt primal fear. I can not remember ever feeling particularly scared of death. As a kid you do not comprehend the severity and impact of it; I barely remember the death of my grandfather when I was 8, and even then the memory is more so a visual picture of the funeral than any emotion I could describe. As I grew up, I became increasingly detached in my thinking, embracing philosophy like it was an obvious artefact of thought. And whilst I love thinking about concepts philosophically, that abstraction also works as a double-edged sword — it is very easy to forget that I am a human that feels things. It is probably why I never naturally developed a real sense of fear towards death. Luck has also meant that I have been shielded from it. Luck in terms of very few family deaths occurring. But luck also in the sense of being separated by great distance. As someone who emigrated to another country, only my immediate family is next door. Every one else, grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunties, they all exist 2,000km away. That distance means I see them once a year, if even. That distance makes it easy to detach and forget. My other grandfather has succumbed to dementia over the last few years. And reflecting on it, I feel uneasy to say that it has not fazed me much. One summer I saw him, he looked normal. The next summer I saw him, he showed clear deterioration of mental capacity, but otherwise was the same jokey man I knew. The summer after, gone; moved to a care home. I have not seen him since. His death will come at some point soon - will I feel anything?

But reading this book, the fear instilled in me was not in relation to myself, or my wider family, but to my parents. I have spent my whole life with them. They have been a constant, ever unchanging. Logically I have always known they will die one day, that is a fact of life after all. But emotionally, I have never pondered the question of how will I deal with their death. And if a work of fiction can instil in me such pain, how many many orders of magnitude worse will their death impact me? I am genuinely terrified to find out, but I know one day the day will come. Though funnily enough, this book has not made me feel anything towards my own death. I am still completely unfazed by the idea of it. Maybe that is because I think of my eventual death as something instant. As lucky as that would be, it likely will not. Logically, I am sure that when I eventually reach poor health, when I start counting my remaining time in years rather than decades, I will come to feel equally in despair.

Whilst death is a grim topic to discuss, and the book itself makes no effort to shy away from this, the story nonetheless presents many moments of happiness and beauty, even in this moment of utmost despair. It it all still too recent in my memory to write about without creating a waterfall. Maybe one day in the future I can analyse this masterpiece in the depth it deserves.