Summer Hours

LoveReading Says

I read this novella blissfully quickly, fittingly on a sunny Friday afternoon during Summer Hours. 

We follow three women: Roisin and Eve are friends – though Roisin is clearly harbouring not-platonic feelings – living together in Edinburgh between jobs, when Eve’s wealthy sister-in-law Claire offers Roisin mysterious ‘freelance’ work. It is, essentially, that Claire pays Roisin to have sex with her. 

Reading it, I had a similar feeling to that in Caroline O’Donague’s The Rachel Incident where the heroine goes and works for the wife of the professor her flatmate is having an affair with. These unusual crossings of intimacy and domesticity, these ways in which Roisin and Eve, so codependent and mutually obsessed in some ways, try to prove their independence or elicit jealousy by proving their desirability to the ‘cooler’ older woman.

It explores the desperation of being poor, and of being in love, and the small powers that can be held over others or kept to oneself. A lovely read for between Edinburgh festival shows this August. 

Reviewed by Billy Lindon
Lily Lindon (Billy) is a writer, editor, and bookseller living in London.
More reviews by Billy Lindon

About Summer Hours

It's a hot Edinburgh summer, and Roisin's life is stagnating. She spends her days cancelling plans, skipping work and drinking lukewarm wine in the bathtub with her best friend Eve.

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