TEST
I used to work in a sawmill that made components for musical instruments. I was a grader in the guitar-top program – that means I spent all day, every day, sorting bookmatched pieces of spruce that would be used to make soundboards. Because of this, I know a lot about what makes a good acoustic guitar, even though I don’t play. I was attracted to Summer in the Land of Skin because it’s about a woman who wants to make guitars. I found that it’s quite a bit more depressing than what I usually read, but it’s nonetheless good and with this book the author makes a promising debut.
We first meet our narrator, Anna Medina, in the midst of what can only be called a nervous breakdown. She hasn’t eaten or slept in three days, and she’s watching her neighbors through binoculars and constructing elaborate suicide fantasies about them. We learn that Anna’s father killed himself when she was 11, and ever since she’s been living in a half-alive limbo, afraid to commit to life.
Partly to flee from her abrasive mother, and partly to find out more about her father, Anna journeys to Bellingham, Washington, seeking her father’s oldest friend, Elliot Bender. Bender and Anna’s father used to be luthiers (they hand-made acoustic guitars) and Anna tells Bender that she wants to learn the trade from him. But Bender is wallowing in alcoholic depression, and refuses to make guitars again or to discuss her father.
Anna meets a gorgeous guitar player and his intense girlfriend. They are Arlan and Lucy, and before she knows it, Anna is living on their couch, attempting to match them drink for drink, and eavesdropping on them when they make love. Anna is wildly infatuated with Arlan, but that’s not what keeps her in the Land of Skin (as she calls this new world she finds herself in). Anna has fallen into orbit around Lucy, one of the most vivid characters I’ve ever encountered. Lucy is bright, talented, opinionated, sensitive, and generous. She’s also self-destructive and manipulative.
The relationship between Lucy and Anna is exceptionally well-drawn, and it’s the best thing about this book. Although Lucy is not an easy person, it’s not hard to understand how the half-numb Anna is drawn to her. Where Anna has always held back from experiencing life, Lucy flings herself into it with terrifying abandon; she’s one of those people who does regrettable things and refuses to have any regrets. When Anna moves in with Lucy and Arlen, her life becomes like theirs: soaked with alcohol, dazed with marijuana smoke (and sometimes high on other things), filled with constant squabbles, laughter, and music. Anna’s longing for Arlan heightens to an aching intensity, but her loyalty to Lucy keeps her from ever acting on it. But does Lucy share that loyalty?
Meanwhile, Anna manages to draw Bender out of his shell. Together they begin to build a guitar, and Bender gives Anna a packet of letters written by her father. Through these letters Anna gets to know him, and it’s not an easy journey for her.
I admit, I had a hard time with this book at first. It pained me to witness Anna’s plunge into Lucy’s heedless lifestyle. But I was also – reluctantly – drawn in by the very heedlessness of it.
Lucy and I are eating lunch in the filthy little room next to the taco stand we love … Taco Jesus hovers between two poles: earthy hedonism and food poisoning… The tacos are amazing … [but] the immediate surroundings are more mundane; the only place to sit is this weird, dirty room sandwiched between the taco trailer and a butcher shop. The tables are always sticky, the floor is covered in green, peeling linoleum. There’s nothing to drink but Mexican sodas that come in lurid colors or fake sangria that’s really just sugary grape juice. Still, Taco Jesus is strangely addictive.
Lucy habitually walks that line between pleasure and disaster (as represented, at Taco Jesus, by hedonism and food poisoning); and Anna does her best to follow. I was braced for disaster through every gin-and-tonic soaked minute of it, but I couldn’t turn away. The author explores relationships – those between Anna and Lucy, between Lucy and Arlen, between Bender and Chet (Anna’s father); and gradually certain troubling similarities between Chet and Lucy become clear. All are described with lyrical prose. In the beginning of the book, the metaphors are piled on a little too thick. On one page in the first chapter, the author says that her father’s eyes had “a visionary zeal so startling he could only be a god or a demon,” and that another character’s eyes have “the hollow listlessness of a concentration camp inmate, a gaze that says she’s seen too much to go on looking.” That’s too much imagery of gazes for one page, you know? But the author seems to hit her stride after that first chapter, weaving a spell of metaphors that I rarely wished to awaken from. The letters from Anna’s father are written in a different style, and invoke an idealistic hippie outlook quite different from the soured cynicism of Lucy and Arlen’s life.
All in all, this book is deeply affecting, powerful – and just a bit of a downer. It’s not by any means a tragic tearjerker, though, and if you’re in the mood for a slice of reality, I recommend it highly. I especially appreciate the author’s skill in making a difficult character like Lucy resonate at such a true pitch. And if I’m a little disappointed that, in all her lovely descriptions of guitars, the author never once alludes to the importance of a perfectly quarter-sawn spruce soundboard – well, nobody’s likely to care but me.
Grade: B
Book Type: Chick Lit
Sensuality: Kisses
Review Date: 28/09/04
Publication Date: 2004
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.