Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2009
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Life Without Summer tells the story of Tessa, a mother who has just lost her four-year-old daughter in a hit-and-run accident and the grief counselor, Celia, who tries to help her to put her life back together. When their lives begin to intersect in powerful and unexpected ways, they discover that the answers one needs might be the other's only chance for peace. Each woman’s intensely personal journey reverberates with universal themes about the connections between love, marriage, truth, and forgiveness that no reader will forget.
"Starred Review. Griffin's carefully crafted characters ring heartbreakingly true and her finely wrought plot will snare readers from the first page." - Publishers Weekly
"Tessa and Celia's first-person voices, conveyed via journal entries, are indistinguishable. Worse, Celia's journal is a less-than-skillful authorial artifice..." - Kirkus Reviews
"There are many deep satisfactions in this absorbing and deftly plotted novel but what I most admired was Lynne Griffin's wonderfully complex characterization of her two heroines ... A sparkling debut." - Margot Livesey, author Banishing Verona
"[T]his stirringly believable epistolary novel... [is a] strong addition to women's fiction." - Booklist
"A remarkable debut novel." - Kristin Hannah, New York Times bestselling author of True Colors
"I could not stop reading…The epitome of smart women's fiction...a deeply satisfying book that pulls us through the lives of two very different women, any one of whom could be ourselves." - Patricia Wood, Orange Prize-nominated author of Lottery
"Haunting, lyrical, and remarkable...fully realized characters who live and breathe from the page...a five star offering from a first-time novelist." - Carrie Padgett, Armchair Interviews
"Lynne Griffin hooks her readers on page one...able to delve into family issues and women’s lives with such fearless insight...readers will be demanding more of this new perspective in fiction." - Norah Piehl, Bookreporter
"There is something rare in the way Lynne Griffin portrays emotions, revealing a sensitive novelist who has the ability to sink beneath the surface of the skin and deliver raw humanity to the page." - Therese Walsh, Writer Unboxed
This information about Life Without Summer was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Lynne Griffin is a nationally recognized expert on family life. She is the author of Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment (2007). Life Without Summer is her first novel.
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