Extraordinary, agonizing, so, so big and true. Thanks, Jeanne, if you see this. ( )

This is a difficult book to review. It’s a novel with a lot of layers. Thornton writes in the author’s note about the act of projection, and particularly the type of mythologizing that happens in fandoms. The novel is very much an exploration of this idea, with The Beach Boys and the mythology surrounding Brian Wilson as the model. It’s essentially a Beach Boys myth retelling with Brian recast as a trans woman. It’s all told through letters written by the MC, Gala (also a trans woman) to the character of Diane, the founder of the Get Happies. Overall, it’s got an uncanny valley quality that seems so real but also not quite right. It makes for an unsettling reading experience in a way that made me question what was real and what was the character projecting. In the end, I found this quite interesting and thought provoking, even if it wasn’t a happy story. I would also say I think knowledge of The Beach Boys and Brian Wilson will add to the experience and add more layers. ( )

2021. Gala, a transgender woman, lives in a trailer in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. She’s obsessed with a Beach Boys-like band called The Get Happies. She writes the Brian Wilson stand in character, B- a ton of letters in which she morphs into a sort of omniscient narrator who knows everything about his past, his family, his/her innermost feelings. This narrator tells us that he’s really a woman, whose name for herself is Diane. At the height of her career, Diane tries to come out as a woman, but it becomes too hard, so she detransitions. But she’s never able to write music after that. Audacious and as crazy as it sounds, this all really works in context. ( )

DNF at Page 245

For those of you who have seen “Say Anything” I will ask you to summon Lili Taylor’s character in that film and then imagine that she wrote and published a novel. This is that novel. The main character, and it certainly seems the writer, are a quivering ball of angst and hurt feelings and intelligence and unrealized potential. (If you haven’t seen Say Anything, cancel your plans for the evening, fire up the HBOMax and get on that. It is, with apologies to John Hughes, the best teen romantic comedy ever and the second or third best Cameron Crowe movie.)

Last week I was on vacation in a mid-size city in the Pacific Northwest and my sister and I went to the art museum one rainy day. The museum has two buildings, one of which is very well curated and chock full of interesting, and some very good, regional artists that people outside of the region would likely be unfamiliar with. The other building was the modern wing, and it is 90+% filled with not good to downright terrible pieces. I had been unaware that there were bad Water LIllies panels before I got here. This museum does not have the funds to compete with large museums for works by brand name artist like Monet, Degas, and Renoir but they want to have them, so they have the throw away junk. The rest of the collection is the kind of art that reminds me why people resent art. There is a piece by a guy who held a pencil over paper as he rode the New York subway every day, and however the train jolted or moved the pencil roamed. And then someone bought this. So as we were walking through thinking derisive thoughts about the collection my sister looked at me and I said “well some of these artists totally got the conceptual part down, they just forgot about the art.” That quote encapsulates how I felt about Summer Fun.

This book is filled with good ideas, and with some really well written passages. That said there are some fatal flaws.
First, the entire structure makes no sense. This is an epistolary novel, all letters going in one direction, from a trans witch named Gala to a fictionalized Brian Wilson. In the letters Gala tells Brian about HIS life. A. How would she know all this detailed info about his experiences, and B. Why would he need to be told his own life?

The book is overwritten. Thornton is the Bob Ross of writing. She has talent, there is a moment when there is a beautiful product, but the artist does not know when to stop? For example, there is a line where Gala, touches the face of another character, a yawn-worthy manic pixie dream girl who Gala crushes on, askes Gala to feel her head for fever. When asked how it feels Gala's first thought is “sebaceous” which is funny, but then she continues “it feels like fried food.” First, that makes no sense and second you just said she felt oily, why say it another way? Thornton does this over and over. It takes away the punch of the prose and makes what should have been a 275 page book into a 432 page book.

The characters other than Gala are cliches, and not good ones.

As mentioned there are some great concepts/themes here. I liked the look at fandom and the ways in which people might use that process to define their identity to to invent parallels between themselves and famous people or characters to make them feel like they themselves have worth.

The book has many sparks of wit well-deployed. BUT my god this needed an editor so badly! First to make some sense of the structure and the weird decision to report your imagination of someone’s life to that someone, second to take out all the detritus – Thornton cannot think a word without including it. Third, to excise the long portions of this where absolutely nothing happens. (There is a reference Warhol’s film Sleep, and that seemed apt - -that is 5 and a half hours of watching John Giorno sleep.) Fourth, an editor could have helped to make Ronda and Caroline matter to the narrative other than as ways to set up series of events. There is good stuff here, but it’s a mess.

All that said, i look forward to reading more of Thornton's work. She has talent I think and a unique voice. With a good editor and an understanding that a book should not include every thought you have (unless you don't think a whole lot which is not the case here) I think Thornton could write some great things. ( )

This was a very strange work, an epistolary novel written from the perspective of a contemporary trans woman to a 1960s trans rock star of a Beach Boys-style group. At first, I was more interested in the contemporary story, and didn't care at all about the historical story. Eventually, I enjoyed both timelines, even though I never quite comprehended the connections between the current and past stories. There is some beautiful and evocative writing here, but the story just never quite came together for me. ( )