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Still Summer
by Jacquelyn Mitchard
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Synopses & Reviews Back in high school, Tracy, Olivia, and Holly were known as The Godmothers, the girls everyone wanted to be and know. Unlike many friendships, their bond survived the years. But 20 years later, their glamorous leader, Olivia, whose wealthy Italian husband has died, suggests they reunite on her return to the United States with a luxury sailboat crossing in the Caribbean. With Tracy's college-aged daughter and an attentive two-man crew, they sail into paradise. But then, the smallest mistake triggers a series of devastating events. Suddenly in a desperate fight for survival, they battle the elements, dwindling food and water, the threat of modern-day piracy, and their own frailties.
Still Summer is at once a breathtaking adventure and a story about the bonds that hold friend to friend and mothers to daughters, and how facing our own mortality tests the truth of everything we think we know. Review: "Bestselling Mitchard offers the harrowing tale of four women lost at sea and pitted against nature and a cohort of contemporary pirates. Tracy, Holly and Olivia have known each other since high school, when they were glamorous, popular troublemakers. Twenty-five years after graduation, the three women, plus Tracy's 19-year-old daughter, Camille, set out on a 'reading, sunning, gossiping' trip aboard a luxe sailboat helmed by a two-man crew. But a storm leaves the women adrift with no sail or engine and their co-captains gone overboard. With limited sailing experience, failing radio equipment and a rapidly diminishing cache of food and water, the women are vulnerable to the worst threats the Caribbean can offer — the elements, sharks and, most troublesome, pirates. This fast-paced novel borrows qualities from several genres — suspense, survival epic, coming-of-age — and mostly succeeds in melding the better aspects of each, though Mitchard has a surer hand in creating women characters than men. Mitchard's fans will appreciate this high-stakes adventure." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "Why do sea tales usually have an all-male cast? Think 'Kon-Tiki' or 'Robinson Crusoe' or 'The Old Man and the Sea.' Maybe women are too sensible to cast off in a flimsy vessel with only a leaky barrel of fresh water and a sketchy map. In her new novel, 'Still Summer,' Mitchard imagines how four landlubber women would cope if they found themselves lost at sea. Not surprisingly, they deal with thirst, ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) pirates and interpersonal relationships far differently than Thor or Robinson. Starting with 'The Deep End of the Ocean,' the first pick of Oprah's now legendary book club, Mitchard's six previous novels explore a common theme: how ordinary women react in extraordinary circumstances. Mitchard's power as a writer lies in her ability to set tragic events — the diagnosis of a serious illness, the disappearance of a child — within the mundane domestic details of her characters' lives. 'Still Summer' opens with the same benign premise as 'Deep End of the Ocean': a reunion of three high school friends who called themselves the Godmothers. Twenty-five years after graduation, Tracy and Holly have long ago traded in their fishnet stockings and imitation black leather jackets for soccer-playing kids, minivans and unglamorous careers (gym teacher and nurse). Only the Godmothers' ringleader, the beautiful Olivia, managed to leave Westbrook, Ill., via marriage to an Italian count. The setting for the reunion is a Caribbean cruise aboard a chartered yacht, organized by Tracy, the mother hen, to cheer up the recently widowed Olivia. At the last minute, Tracy's surly but beautiful teenage daughter, Cammie, tags along, having been dumped by a boyfriend and in need of some cheering up herself. The Opus, a 'gleaming and magnificent' 53-foot trimaran, does not disappoint the four women. Neither does the crew. Captain Lenny and first mate Michel have all the qualifications required in the charter-boat industry. They can lead scuba dives, tell pirate stories, 'poach monkfish in lemongrass and wine,' blend potent drinks and take off their shirts 'when hauling on the halyards to make it look like hard work and give the old gals a bit of an eyeful.' Lenny begins the cruise with one of those overly detailed safety lectures that signify impending disaster — the flares, the GPS, the inflatable raft, the emergency food rations, the water maker. Oh, and the gun locked in a strongbox. The women, already thinking about monkfish and snowy drinks, pay about as much attention as airline passengers when told how to turn a seat cushion into a life preserver. For the first three days, the sailboat blissfully bobs through paradise as advertised, but trouble is brewing just over the horizon as a storm picks up speed. More ominously, three men in a stolen boat with a hold full of heroin are heading on a collision course toward the Opus over ever-more-choppy seas. A couple of minor mishaps separate Michel and Lenny from the Opus despite their 'instinctive sea skill.' After a hundred pages of storm-building and clue-sprinkling, Mitchard seems impatient to get down to business: four women alone on the deep blue sea. With the crew overboard, Tracy, Holly and Cammie attempt to man the helm to the best of their abilities, which are not vast — a little sailing on a Wisconsin lake, a high school auto mechanics class. Everything that can go wrong does. The sail blows out, the power fails, the food spoils, a leg wound starts to fester ... then the pirates clamber aboard. The drug smugglers guzzle the last of their water and make lewd grumblings in Spanish toward the bikini-clad Cammie. The Godmothers get the gist without a translation. Big mistake, Ernesto and Carlo. 'Still Summer' succeeds best when Mitchard plays to her strength: the ability to capture the noble and slightly ridiculous dimensions of her middle-aged characters. Unlike Olivia, who has kept her figure, 'by dint of a suck,' Holly and Tracy go for frumpy resort wear but there's sinew beneath those plaid Bermuda shorts. Unfortunately, 'Still Summer' is undermined by predictable plot turns and tired character types. As the days tick by, Olivia lapses into Alexis Carrington hauteur, more concerned that the sunburn and dehydration will damage her skin than that they might kill her. The non-English-speaking thugs, with their 'smell of offal and pitted teeth,' seem to have drifted in from a 1960s John D. MacDonald novel. The final revelation has been so laboriously foreshadowed that the only surprise is that the women hadn't figured it out years before. But Mitchard shouldn't be judged too harshly; her aim is to create a high-seas yarn with a suburban-mom twist. While the relentless nautical calamities are far-fetched, the women's willingness to throw themselves overboard, literally, to save a precious daughter is not. As the title implies, 'Still Summer' provides an entertaining hammock read, but Mitchard's fans may hope she returns to true form in her next novel." Reviewed by Caroline Preston, whose most recent novel is 'Gatsby's Girl', Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "[T]he story comes alive as the four women find themselves lost at sea and fending off modern-day pirates. Fans of Mitchard will be pleased." Library Journal Review: "[F]ans will enjoy this mix of seafaring adventure and romantic suspense." Booklist Review: "An afternoon spent tearing through the pages of Still Summer, feeling the stranded women's hunger pangs and cringing at Mitchard's descriptions of ghastly sunburns and rationed water, will leave the reader with similar feelings of gratitude." Chicago Sun-Times Review: "Secure your life preserver. Tie yourself to the mast. It's late August, but it's still summer, and Jacquelyn Mitchard is taking you on a thrill ride you won't forget." USA Today Review: "Still Summer develops the characters in what amounts to a coming-of-age saga for each of them." Seattle Times About the Author
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780446578769
- Author:
- Mitchard, Jacquelyn
- Publisher:
- Grand Central Publishing
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Cruise ships
- Subject:
- Female friendship
- Subject:
- Suspense
- Subject:
- Action & Adventure
- Copyright:
- 2007
- Publication Date:
- August 2007
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Pages:
- 307
- Dimensions:
- 9.20x6.40x1.28 in. 1.17 lbs.
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