Midsummer - Paperback

by Marcelle Clements (Author)

A splendid Hudson River estate, complete with cook and rose garden. The landscape is inebriating, the women are in full, passionate bloom, and the men are incomprehensible. Susie-chic, smart, spacey, and no longer promiscuous- decides, at forty-five, to do what she would have done at twenty-five: invite a group of amusing friends to spend eight weekends of summer in stunning surroundings. The invitees include her oldest friend, Kay, elegantly nursing a broken heart; her former lover Dodge-still the sexiest man she knows; his randy, neurotic, comedian friend Ron; and Elise, an on-the-cusp artist determined to be in a relationship before she hits forty. Add to the mix Susie's very ardent, very surprising twenty-four-year-old son, and an exhibitionist au pair next door, and you have a delicious romantic farce that deftly slides into and out of something quite a bit darker.

Back Jacket

Clements's second novel is one of those rare, satisfying books in which nothing much happens and yet nothing is left unchanged.--The New Yorker
The setting is a ridiculously grand Hudson River estate, shared by a group of friends for the summer. At first, Susie's idea is to cheer up her old schoolmate, Kay. She invites an ex-lover, Dodge, who brings in Ron, a comedian. On impulse, Susie also invites a woman artist she knows only slightly. Everyone looks forward to a respite from Manhattan but each privately anticipates something more. The landscape is inebriating; the relationships intense. Over the course of the summer, attraction and withdrawal succeed one another at an astonishing pace. When the party is crashed by Susie's ardent and surprising twenty-four-year-old son, as well as by the exhibitionistic au pair next door, the summer turns into a study of desire--its charm, its futility, and its power.
"A book full of a rose garden's suggestive stillness, heat, and cultivated beauty . . . A beautiful book, light in tone as summers and gardens often are, but not at all light in its lasting effects."--O, The Oprah Magazine

Marcelle Clements was born in Paris and moved to New York at age ten. Her previous books were a collection of essays, The Dog Is Us; a novel, Rock Me; and a nonfiction book, The Improvised Woman. Her articles and essays on culture, politics, and the arts have appeared in many national publications.