A Book to Avoid

I'm sure few of you would ever be moved to read Ann Brashares' new novel, The Last Summer (of You and Me) . But for those who might be tempted, let me say this: don't bother.

Brashares, in case you don't know, is the author of the outrageously successful Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series for young adults. The series is chock-full of annoying, low-grade YA clichés: genre-bound, simplistic, predictable exchanges that follow a high-key Hollywood arc. Nothing truly bad happens, the risks the protagonists face are minor and non-threatening, and the books invariably resolve happily, with renewed commitment to friendship forever (a commitment that strangely ebbs away by the beginning of the next book). Earlier this year Brashares brought all her Travelling Pants heroines to the cusp of adulthood, perhaps thinking her readership would then graduate to the new novel she's written for adults. And while readers might buy the book because they recognize the author's name, I can't imagine any but those who like badly written, formulaic storytelling enjoying it.

The Last Summer tells the story of Alice and Riley, sisters in their early twenties, and their best boy pal, Paul. After several years apart, the trio reunite at their summer homes on Fire Island. Preposterousness then ensues: a secret romance, a fast-moving tragedy, a protracted misunderstanding, and a final tearful resolution. Despite more than 300 pages of plot and exposition, real characters never arrive to flesh out Brashares' sketches. Her prose is bloated and occasionally pedantic — there is no doubt readers will understand the deeper philosophy the writer means to communicate, if only because the writer underlines it in triplicate. Brashares' technique alternates between stilted, extremely formal constructions and vapid, throwaway sentences. When the copyediting started to fall apart, about 100 pages into the novel, I was convinced the editor was having as much trouble taking the book seriously as I was. Not only could I predict the plot from chapter one; at no point did the writer make me care about the story or the characters. Even the sex scenes are coy and cool, as they would be in one of Brashares' YA books, and the serious problems of young adults living in an increasingly complex world are waved away, deferred for contemplation some vague time after Labour Day.

I'd been hoping that Brashares had more promise than her Travelling Pants premise permitted her to express — I was looking forward to a breakout book. Sadly, this is no breakout; it isn't even good summer reading. Clichéd, trite, underdeveloped and overwritten, The Last Summer (of You and Me) is a book to avoid.