REFLECTIONS ON A MOUNTAIN SUMMER

by Joanna M. Glass ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1974

Reflections on a Mountain Summer which is the name of the memoir of a middle-aged man, Jay, shortened here to the acronym ROAMS, is also the first attempt at ""public penmanship"" of Joanna Glass whose virtues are such quiet ones that you might overlook her. Just as you might Jay's mother Laura -- whom the book is mostly about -- a tall, ungainly, ""weather-worn"" woman. Actually for a good half of this book Miss Glass uses her unremarkable materials in a circumambient fashion -- diddling the reader can be a way of losing him. Laura has had a slackly indifferent marriage (so now does Jay) when her husband decides to spend a summer in the mountains up near the Canadian border and this is when Winger Bums, all ""thunder and lightning,"" Winger Burns who'd never been past the eighth grade but has a lot of worldly know-how, moves into her life. Since Winger refuses to ""come in under the door,"" Laura lives with him openly and having until then felt only a ""malnutrition of the soul,"" achieves something she never will again. And Jay, who is privy to it, and to Winger's maverick and expansive nature, will also find a warmth and intimacy so sadly missing in his experience. . . In its simple, everyday fashion the book manages by its close an intensification you might never have expected, and it is written with a kind of honesty and wide open affection you don't often find in life or novels.

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1974

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION