Up on the porch, Ophelia’s head jerked around, as if she were afraid someone might be sneaking up the back. But there were only carpenter bees, bringing back their satchels of gold, and a woodpecker, drilling for grubs. There was a ground pig in the rumpled grass, and the more Ophelia set and stared, the more she and Fran both saw. A pair of fox kits napping under the laurel. A doe and a fawn teasing runners of bark off young trunks. Even a brown bear, still tufty with last winter’s fur, nosing along the high ridge above the house. While Ophelia sat enspelled on the porch of that dangerous house, Fran curled inward on her couch, waves of heat pouring out of her. Her whole body shook so violently her teeth rattled. Her spyglass fell to the floor. Maybe I am dying, Fran thought, and that is why Ophelia came here.
…
Fran hesitated. “I don’t know where they come from. They aren’t always there. Sometimes they’re…somewhere else. Ma said she felt sorry for them. She thought maybe they couldn’t go home, that they’d been sent off, like the Cherokee, I guess. They live a lot longer, maybe forever, I don’t know. I expect time works different where they come from. Sometimes they’re gone for years. But they always come back. They’re summer people. That’s just the way it is with summer people.”
When the story ended, I asked myself, “Self? Do you ACTUALLY want to meet the summer people?” I want so badly to know more about them, but it feels like the kind of knowledge that would come at a price. Like, if I knew the secrets of the summer people, I would have to become one of them, or they would tie me up in ivy and bury me in the basement of their rickety house.
It can be excruciating when an author writes too thinly for what feels like the sake of being “literary”; so it’s like finding a diamond in the rough when I stumble across a sparse narrative that begs no further explanation. When it comes to spelling out the premise of the story “The Summer People” from Kelly Link’s new collection, Get In Trouble, I come up empty handed- it is not just a story; it’s an experience. Leading with the strongest, the stories in this collection weave in and out of normalcy. A vampire and woman break up. A hotel holds a conference for superheroes in one room, and dentists in the other. Rich young girls have their parents build them pyramids while hired actors become their public “faces”. A ghost boyfriend slips through the fingers of an eager young lover.
Exploring themes of love (new and fizzled) and a new generation busy getting in trouble, Link’s new collection is truly a force to be reckoned with. Perfect for readers who love Karen Russell, Kevin Wilson, and George Saunders.
Written by Hannah
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