The Summer That Melted Everything

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Il racconto è portato avanti da Fielding, che ora, nel 2050, ha ottant’anni e vive in una roulotte in Arizona, tra bottiglie scolate e cactus: non si è mai ripreso dagli eventi che racconta, che l’hanno visto tredicenne testimone e protagonista, nell’estate del 1984 che con l’arrivo del diavolo Sal divenne presto torrida. A haunting Appalachian Gothic novel that calls into question the nature of good and evil." --Akron Beacon Journal

I will say that 1984 was a year that understood how to make history. Apple launched it's Macintosh computer for the masses, two astronauts walked the stars like gods, and singer Marvin Gaye, who sang about how sweet it was to be loved, was shot through the heart and killed by his father . Oh, well, most folks think it’s pronounced like the past tense of breathin’. You know, like you just breathed somethin’ in. But it’s not like that at all. Say breath. and then ed. Breath-ed. Say it so the tongue don’t recognize such a large break between Breath and ed. Breathed.” The book is narrated by a much older Fielding, who reminisces about that life-changing summer, and the scars it left him with throughout his life. At times it was hard to distinguish when the plot was unfolding as it happened and when Fielding was recounting memories of other times in his life, and the emotional trauma Fielding suffered makes his older self a fairly unsympathetic character periodically. But when the story is fully told, much of his motivation becomes clear (although some plot twists confused me a little). La terra di cui parla Autopsy Bliss nel suo invito è appunto l’Ohio, parte della Bible Belt, terra di protestanti ed evangelici che come dice la denominazione se non girano per strada con la bibbia in mano, l’hanno sicuramente in casa, e la sbandierano ogni volta che possono. Cristiani integralisti. Non molto diversi dagli integralisti di altre religioni. E sappiamo bene che la gente è sempre stata uccisa, torturata, massacrata, messa al rogo in nome di un qualche dio chiamato Yahweh o Elohim o Allah, o… o denaro. Tiffany: First off, thank you for the incredibly wonderful compliment of Autopsy’s name. I’m sure Autopsy himself would be quite pleased. When I start writing the characters, I do have to have their name from the beginning. Having their name really helps to create and flush out the character. I can’t write them without a name. It’s like walking in dark woods by myself, calling for the characters to come out from the trees. But if I don’t have a name to call, who is there to come out?I have heard many times while obtaining my degrees in Clinical Psychology that that Murder/Homicides go up with ice cream sales. We are taught that it is a coincidence. But heat does something doesn't it. Don't we all get a little irritable when overheated? Can the heat really make people crazy? Pain is our most intimate encounter. It lives on the very inside of us, touching everything that makes us. It claims your bones, it masters your muscles, it reels in your strength, and you never see it again. The artistry of pain is its content. The horror of it is the same.” I think what the people of Breathed forgot about was that the concept of the Devil is manifested in all of us. You might not see him when you look in the mirror dead on, but turn your head to the side and look out of the corner of your eye, and you might catch a glimpse of him. He is reflected in your fingernails when the light is just right. Sometimes, if you close your eyes down to slits, you can see him in the swirls of your pancake. He stares at us from the darkness, from the bowel of a tree, or through the eyes of an owl. You can’t kill him. You can’t kill the light that has fallen to darkness. This all brought me to a big a-ha moment: I don't like Southern fiction! Or Midwest fiction or whatever it is. (The story actually takes place in Ohio even though it feels like the South.) And I didn't even know I didn’t like Southern or Midwest fiction until the dialogue and folksiness and God stuff all started bombarding me at once. I winced in pain. When you look at every single element of this story, every single character, phrase and all of the parts of the plot, you get one perfect whole, compliteness that leaves you breathtaken in an absolutely literal way.

La famiglia Bliss è completata dalla madre Stella e dal fratello diciottenne Grand, campione locale di baseball, un grande lanciatore. as it turned out, the delay was a blessing, and the timing could not have been better - nothing beats finishing a book taking place during a horrible heat wave on the day a blizzard hits, and i loved every sweaty bit of this. The heat came with the devil. It was the summer of 1984, and while the devil had been invited, the heat had not. It should've been expected, though. Heat is, after all, the devil's name, and when's the last time you left home without yours?" Tiffany McDaniel:I first read Milton’s epic poem when I was in my early twenties. I was immediately drawn to it because it’s about that which has always fascinated me. The fall from grace. The very thing that is said to have cast all the curses upon us as human beings, and put the sins within reach. I always title my chapters in my novels, and when I was thinking of the chapter titles for The Summer that Melted Everything, “Paradise Lost” immediately came to mind. How could it not be the perfect partner for this summer? Though I do hope I have made Milton proud by including his beautiful quotes, quotes which do outshine my own words by a billion, sparkling miles. On the Savage Side is gorgeously written. If you are looking for humor or hope then this is not the book for you. It’s gritty and dark and we feel for these lost souls. This must have been a difficult book to write. But it really had to be written.”Simply put, I didn’t want this book to come to an end— so much so that I even reread the first chapter. And now I cannot wait for what Tiffany McDaniel will write next. It's the summer of 1984 in the small town of Breathed, Ohio. Fielding Bliss is a fairly typical teenager until the day his father, Autopsy (is Autopsy Bliss not one of the best character names you've ever heard?), the town's prosecutor, puts in the newspaper an invitation for the devil to visit Breathed.

Then there was the strawberry jam I’d believed was blood. It seeped from the broken jars, oozing wide and then tapering as if the way to eternal glory is one long, narrow passage. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get there. Our sins widen us until the narrow way is something we can never go through. We have no choice but to languish in the boiling of what’s left, as I have been languishing.” O se un ometto piccolo e basso, che alcuni definiscono nano, che cammina sui tetti di case e chiese a riparare campanili e comignoli, ha proprio uno dei nomi di dio: Elohim.mourning----bereavement----leaving everyone vulnerable as though sorrow is the price of life itself.

The Sinker - A beautifully written debut novel with a creative take on a story that’s been told many ways before. This book reminded me how much I enjoy reading literary fiction, even though I don't read it too often. Also also, the familial relationships in this book were spectacular. I kept wanting to delve deeper and know more about each family member— and it all started with the grandma (whom I loved), she was such a unique addition: Paraphrasing, Fear, is the first shadow of ignorance." Covers so much of what happens in this novel and I find it applicable in the present, sadly in my own country.not that everyone will see it that way - the scapegoat is a very tempting place to lay the blame, and no one wants to confront the uncomfortable realization that evil was already simmering in the town before the devil showed up. and there's evil aplenty, from relatively small transgressions like infidelity to much, much bigger ones. Sal seems to appear out of nowhere - a bruised and tattered thirteen-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Narrated by the deceased Arc, McDaniel’s novel is by turns stark and poetic, a bleak and solemn elegy to lives that in another place and time might have been lived on the beautiful side. It’s also a tale of a nation unraveling, drowning in rivers of hopelessness and drug addiction.” Note: I got this book for free via Netgalley in an exchange for an honest review. Thank you Tiffany McDaniel and St. Martin's Press.