Summertime: the livin’ is easy, and maybe the reading should be, too. Dipping into Jamie Brenner’s new novel is like massaging your soles in the sand while anticipating that first bite of a lobster roll you packed for a sunset picnic at Herring Cove. The story is delicious. You sense a happy ending will roll in with the tide. And you think, as affairs of state signal storms on the horizon, this is surely a moment to swallow it whole.
In A Novel Summer, just published by HarperCollins, Brenner treats her readers to the interwoven stories of three friends who spend college summers in Provincetown before embarking on their own literary careers. “Studious vagabond Shelby” is off to Manhattan to become a writer; “old money Hunter” takes a publishing job in her native Boston, and “Cape Cod Colleen,” a Provincetown native, stays in town to run a bookstore owned by her two moms.
Shelby has just written her first bestseller, which is set on Cape Cod. She’s fictionalized Hunter in her novel, revealing secrets that make her friend hopping mad. Meanwhile, Colleen has an unexpected crisis and begs Shelby to manage the bookstore in her absence. Shelby returns to town to find that Hunter isn’t the only person feeling betrayed.
A Novel Summer is about the evolution of friendship from college to adult life. Brenner recently attended her 30th college reunion at George Washington University and found herself musing about the people she’d remained close with and those with whom she’d lost touch.
“I feel like there is this window where friendships are either going to make the leap to the so-called real world or just become like, ‘Oh yeah. I remember that person,’ ” she says. Shelby, Hunter, and Colleen are bound by their love of Provincetown and books but have different priorities when it comes to their careers and men. The characters explore whether those competing tensions can be resolved.
Brenner’s introduction to Provincetown came from novelist and summer resident Michael Cunningham, whom she heard in a television interview describe the town as a place where eccentricity was celebrated, and bad behavior was not tolerated. She was intrigued; when she paid a visit, she found Cunningham’s description of the community to be spot on.
“As soon as I stepped onto Commercial Street, I felt like I was Dorothy landing in Oz,” Brenner says. “Everything back home was in black and white and this place was in color. My intention was, when I started writing these summer books, to do a different place every summer. But I kept coming back to Provincetown. It just completely captured my imagination.”
Whether she’s capturing the preparations for Carnival or describing the interiors of historic and modernist homes, Brenner’s writing shows she has come to know the town. There is relatively little, however, about the town’s queer culture and diversity in A Novel Summer; the main characters are straight white women. Still Brenner’s storytelling is fun, fast-moving, and as many critics have observed, heartfelt.
And it’s not without some rigor. Unlike most novels in the beach book category, A Novel Summer pays attention to economic and environmental issues, a dimension of Brenner’s storytelling that will further endear her to local fans.
There’s one storyline about the town trying to buy a building on an unnamed pier to convert it to affordable housing, only to be outbid by a developer who wants to build a hotel. Another is about flooding that looks as if it means Colleen’s bookstore will have to close for good. And there are multiple references to the struggles of business owners trying to find and retain staff.
“I remember sitting on a bench on Commercial and a woman sat down next to me, and she was upset,” Brenner says. “She said, ‘How can I run a business when the people I need to staff it cannot afford to be here?’ I think this happens in a lot of beach towns, but Provincetown is so small, so vulnerable.”
The author, who lives in a Philadelphia suburb, spent one winter in Provincetown, experiencing the force of the winds and flooding.
“I can’t write about it without thinking of that,” she says. “Like so many lovely things, the town is fragile. It can only take so much without asking for a little bit back. So many people in town take that call seriously, and it’s one of the reasons why I love it and the people there.”
Locals who pack Proust for a picnic may sniff at Brenner’s book: an entertaining beach read with heart-quickening cliffhangers. But who cares? The world is going to hell and Jamie Brenner is taking us someplace else. If only for a few hours.
Elevated Beach Read
The event: Jamie Brenner in conversation with Jennifer Belle
The time: Monday, July 22, 6 p.m.
The place: Provincetown Public Library, 356 Commercial St.
The cost: Free
