This One Summer

by Mariko Tamaki

art by Jillian Tamaki

2014

This One Summer is a young adult graphic novel about a memorable vacation at a lake, written and illustrated by cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki. It’s fiction, but feels very much like a memoir. It’s the sort of time an adult author might look back on, the dialogue is naturalistic, and the plotting and characterization both feel very true to life. This is how people talk, this is how they act. The least realistic thing is that life never has this much thematic unity.

We follow Rose, a girl on the cusp of puberty, whose family spends two weeks in a cabin by the lake each summer. Each year, Rose hangs out with her best friend Windy, who’s a year or two younger. This year that gap translates into an awkward imbalance: Windy is still a kid, but Rose is becoming a teen. They spend the days swimming and hiking in the woods. They talk about what it will be like to grow breasts and get their periods. And they decide to rent grown-up horror movies from the local convenience store. They notice the slashers treat girls different than boys. Probably neither of them is quite ready for what they’re watching, but they’re both curious, and they both want to be ready.

Rose’s parents are fighting. She knows they were trying to have another kid, but didn’t. Rose doesn’t really know what that might mean, or how it might relate to the fact that her mother seems depressed and unwilling to participate in many of the usual fun vacation activities. She probably doesn’t understand how her dad being fun and laid back creates an obligation for her mom to be more serious and responsible.

The third plot thread is lives of some of the older teens who live in town all year round. Rose and Windy pick up on what’s going on only vicariously, as conversations happen around them, or in a few cases thanks to deliberate eavesdropping.

Windy teases Rose that she has a crush on the guy who works at the convenience store, and at first I thought it was just a joke, but it becomes clear that she does feel something for him, and when there’s trouble later, she instinctively takes his side, even though she doesn’t really know him. There’s a running theme of characters saying ‘I’m kidding’ to try to smooth over the awkwardness after they’ve said or done something that didn’t land. It’s one of the things Rose and Windy talk about.

The trouble I mentioned is that the guy who works at the convenience store, the guy Rose likes, has a girlfriend who just found out she’s pregnant. She understandably anxious to talk to him, and he keeps refusing to answer her calls. Eventually, this leads to a much bigger confrontation that brings all three plot threads together, and shows us (and Rose) a different, more sympathetic side of her mom.

Throughout the book, we see Rose learning about and grappling with adult femininity and heterosexuality. What will it be like to have boobs, and how big will they be? Are those older girls really ‘sluts’? Is it wrong to call them that? Why are Rose’s parents fighting so much? Why doesn’t her mom seem to want to have fun? And why isn’t it okay for her to vacation at her own pace, in her own way? Why are the convenience store guy and his girlfriend fighting? What does he owe to her? What does Rose actually feel for him?

It’s a coming of age story, focused on Rose’s growing awareness of sexism, and of her own ability to be wrong. Because Windy is just a little younger, she functions almost like Rose’s younger self. She still thinks the way Rose did last year, so when they disagree, it’s a measure of how Rose is changing as she grows up.

I’ve praised the writing, but the art is worth mentioning too. Jillian Tamaki’s drawings are realistic and expressive. The scenery is especially detailed. The book is printed in purple ink instead of black, with lavender instead of grey. It adds to the feeling of nostalgia.

Reading this reminded me of the vacations my parents took us on with our extended family when I was younger, of the odd, timeless, self-contained quality of a week spent in a place you don’t really live around people you only see while traveling. This one is really something special.