The First Magnificent Summer (R.L. Toalson)

 

Victoria could think of no rougher induction into adulthood. Mere days from starting her first menstrual cycle, she must not only face the father who abandoned her to start a new family, the father who she hasn't seen in two years, but she must stay with him for the last month of her summer vacation. At least she'll have her trusty notebooks with her.

R.L. Toalson's The First Magnificent Summer (2023, Aladdin) is the journal of a twelve-year-old who is astute, sensitive, and scarred. Her journal is her best friend and her only true confidant. She can tell no other of the torture of her father's judgment—he ridicules her weight, insists her writing is a waste of time, and (worst of all, in his eyes) compares Victoria with her mother. What's more, she vies for his approval anyway. Against her better judgment, Victoria longs for her father's attention and love, and she loves him. She can't help herself.

In painful detail, Toalson captures the competing mind and heart of an abused child. As the novel progresses, his behavior only worsens. This is somehow a very funny and often poetic book, but the author does not sugarcoat childhood trauma. Few books so believably capture a child's perspective as does The First Magnificent Summer (only two others spring to mind, Kira-Kira by Kadohata and The List of Things That Will Not Change by Stead), and this novel's voice is sophisticated enough to intensify descriptions (of events, of feelings) to a breaking point in the reader's heart. The book had me in tears.

People say words all the time. They say words they don't mean, words that twirl away on the wind, words that fade and sizzle into nothing. I'll see you soon. I'll call you next week. Of course we're not getting divorced.

I love you.

Words are the easy part, I think.