"A love triangle of three women in an Edinburgh heatwave, Summer Hours explores the power-struggles of money, friendship, and desire "
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.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
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.
When their wealthy mutual friend Claire offers Roisin a significant amount of money under the guise of 'freelance work,' Roisin thinks her luck might finally be changing. But Claire's proposal is not all it seems, and soon Roisin finds herself trapped. Paralysed by both her intense infatuation with Eve and her secret arrangement with Claire, Roisin must walk a delicate line to avoid losing what matters to her most.
Summer Hours features in the following genres: Audiobooks of the Month, Debuts, Family Drama, General Fiction, Literary Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Romance / Relationship Stories, Category fiction, Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, General Fiction, Family Drama, Fiction: special features, Category fiction, LGBTQ+ Fiction, Relating to LGBTQ+ people
Summer Hours is available in Paperback, Hardback, Audiobook
Summer Hours was written by Alessandra Thom and published by W. F. Howes Ltd
