Cruel Summer

I originally reviewed this summery novel in the middle of January, because I happened to know that Bernard Jan was just about to publish a poetry collection linked to Cruel Summer so, while I read an advance copy of Postcards From Beyond Reality: The Selected Poems of Michael Daniels, I revisited the novel which inspired the poetry.

Cruel Summer is a very different novel to the books I have previously read by Bernard Jan so it was interesting for me to see how well he can adapt his poetic writing style to different genres. I would primarily identify Cruel Summer as a young adult novel because it centres on a teenage skateboarding community, but the narrative also encompasses shades of dystopian science fiction and crime fiction, going to some dark psychological places at times. This fluidity did mean I found it difficult initially to really get into the story and I was several chapters in before I felt I had a proper grip on the storyline. The juxtaposition between the novel's futuristic apects and its retro setting confused me at first although I did love Jan's nods to the trends and fashions of the late 1990s - X-Files and The Celestine Prophecy being ones that particularly brought back memories for me.

The relationships and loyalties between Michael and his friends are an important part of Cruel Summer. Their conversations allow readers to gain insights into how these skateboarding fanatics view their environment. Michael is the traumatised boy at the centre and Cruel Summer is very much his coming of age story, but I felt the eponymous summer was equally as decisive for his absent sister, Rebecca, and his closest friends, Victor and Alien, each dealing with their own crises. The New York setting is vital too and I loved that Cruel Summer is one of those novels where its location almost becomes a character in its own right. That kind of authentic grounding is important to me as a reader and I certainly appreciated it here.