A triumph of triumphs. If you don’t know who Sarah MacLean is, chances are you live beneath a rock. She is one of the doyennes of historical fiction that seeks to redress an imbalance in storytelling. She mashes up a rich and venerable cast of characters that paints a vivid and lively society which only further enriches the story. MacLean is known for her prowess in historical fiction but in These Summer Storms, her first dalliance with contemporary, she shines. Her stock in trade is still present; families and their messiness, the setting shifts centuries ahead but in the same token she lets us know, past or present, the shenanigans of the rich remain ever faithful.
Family is messy, this is the simple premise at the heart of the Storms, this rich as creases, messy as a baby trying to feed itself for the first time, family. I love rich people mess; I love rich people shenanigans and MacLean does both so well.
The patriarch of the Storm family Franklin has passed away and the family have come together for a “celebration” of his life post passing. Alice Storm has been estranged from her family; she is the daughter who dared stand up to her father in a way no one ever did and that got her cut off. Their last words exchanged, five years prior, were not kind. Alice is making her way back to their private island, the home where they grew up, to be with her family, mourn their loss, and hopefully get to the heart of the issue that saw her unmoored from them.
For most of us family are the best and worst of us. They know what buttons to push because they installed those buttons, and we have given them the depth of feeling by allowing them to stay where they can most hurt us, out of some blinded obligation and of course the great manipulator of all; Love. Love makes us tolerate crap and do even more crap in the name of family.
There’s the cold as ice mother who is so blinded by her own fault, she would take it out on her child to assuage some guilt and see it as martyrdom.
The stranger on a train who bears a burden.
The convergence of a moment around an event that is likely to combust.
These are the set pieces that MacLean brings together to tell this heft of a story and they work seamlessly well. The children are horrible, yes even Alice. The partners, bar one, are for the most part, good. Franklin is a monster and Elizabeth is a bitch. And yet we want them to make it out alive but not after a knock down drag out fight where truths are told that go right to the core of those buttons and explodes, tears down their shaky foundation, and if all goes well, gives real love a chance so they begin to heal
This was a rich story in the fullness of the word, and it is every bit as salacious as it is delicious to watch the rich eat the rich and torch it all down like some gas guzzling billionaire who only wants the world for him but in the end, he annihilates himself in the worst way possible.
What the hell is a normal family? There’s no such thing. We are all abnormal in our own microcosms of families and communities and in our dysfunction, we find the stuff in between that makes us function as normal and that’s where the love stuff comes into play. Love. Ugh.
LOVE. At the heart of this story is the multifaceted complexities of love, an emotion so simple yet so heavy. Family sucks but love makes them suck less and wins the day in the end because by the end of this book it is a deserving victory because every facet of the complex emotion has been tested beyond its limit. The muddled nature of unconditional love is also at play here. It’s not some tidy little thing that comes without consequences it’s bloody complicated. It’s messy and wayward and heartbreaking in a way that asks us to diminish ourselves every so often in big and little ways. It is this particular kind of love that makes us, and only us, as family, entitled to our feelings about each other and the world on the periphery does not get a say. We may hate them in particular way, but on the flip side of that, is unconditional love. It is quite a peculiar feeling this.
We share an origin story with family, particularly those to whom we are invariably linked; we came out from the same womb, share the same roots and DNA. For the better part of our lives, our memories; good, bad, ugly and messy are inextricably linked and they are all ours. We share a world with them; shared a life, filled, and full, with them, travelling through the rigmarole of emotions; happiness, sadness, madness, anger, rage, fear, loathing and above all else, love.
When family comes together in this particular circumstance; a death in the family, bad blood left to flow for years without stemming the tide, betrayal and anger, there is bound to be a reckoning. A great unravelling that leaves the fractured pieces in its wake. Words will be said, emotions will run high, and the low road will be found where cheap shots will be thrown after which, you are never really okay, but you resolve to move on. You heal but only just, and yet the one thing that keeps you moored is that unconditional and messy thing called love. You are left with each other, a forced coming together, after life’s quick dalliance with death, such as the scene that unfolds in the library after the tree has crashed onto the house. The family is stripped bare, charred and raw skinned, they see each other properly for the first time in a really long time, beyond the machinations of their parents, beyond the games of their father, after the storm such as it were, helped along by that twisted little complicated madness of love. And it is real, the most real it has been for as long as they can remember, and messy and good and honest. And lovely. Family.
Because family is the safe space, no matter how complicated, where you get to come apart and bring yourself together.