Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to give it 10 stars!!!!!!! WOW!
Review: Can you think of a more wonderful place to have had the pleasure of reading this book than in the northwestern mountains of Maine?! Yes I did! I spend a week every summer at just such a place as the fishing camp described in this gorgeous novel (I can't help but wonder if maybe it's one and the same!?). Justin Cronin has written the best book I've read all summer, perhaps all year. I am going to run out and buy Mary and O'Neil, and can't wait already for his next book!
Rating:
Summary: Quietly enthralling
Review: I admired Mary and O'Neil, but I loved this book. Beautifully written, its characters are good people for whom we quickly come to care. While, it's true, as one reviewer noted, that all the pieces fit together at the end, one never feels manipulated because the people are so individual, so true to their place and time. Understatement is an art in itself, and one at which Cronin excels. There is not a superfluous word in this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Moving and meaningful
Review: I loved the summer Guest. The character development was done in an interesting back and forth way. The book had many messages and the writing was well done from start to finish. I could not put it down.Parts of it brought tears to my eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Very Enjoyable
Review: I read a lot and do not dig 'chick lit,' romances or formula books. This one was none of the above and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: Evocative Reading
Review: Justin Cronin has a talent for totally involving the reader in the lives of characters who seem ordinary but who have intriguing stories. This compelling novel evokes a wide range of emotions as he takes us through the multi-generational tale of lives surrounding a fishing camp in Maine. As in "Mary and O'Neil," much of Cronin's tale is family-centered, complete with husband-wife, parent-sibling relationships that get plumbed to the depths. It's a love story, of course, and the scene where many summer guests are dancing on the dock to Ella Fitzgerald singing "How High the Moon" on the night Lance Armstrong takes his giant step for mankind is so beautifully told as to bring tears to your eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: The Notebook--with a Difference
Review: Recently I saw a very good movie on the plane, it was with James Garner and Gena Rowlands, and it described their love through the years and the way their families tried to break them up but their love for each other and for the land kept them together. When you read THE SUMMER GUEST you will feel the same way, that you have lived through generations of lovers and current events. All the way from the battles of the Vietnam Era to the Salerno and Sicily campaigns of World War II. The story is complicated so you might like to do what I did, and write down a chart of who is who, especially with the two Joes (father and son) you could easily get lost. After awhile I asked myself why the main bluk of the story was taking place in 1994 instead of in the present day, then referring to my chart I realized that Cronin had sort of written himself into a corner for if he wanted to make Harry Wainwright the age he was, he would have definitely have had to alter his (fictional) birthdate. A shame in a way, because unless you're keeping track of everyone's narrative voice (I used different color post it notes) (a different color for each narrator) you will be hard pressed to tell them apart. They all speak in very simple sentences, very understated, like characters from some old time John O'Hara novel. However, the story that Cronin unleashes will make your tearducts fill up and overflow as he reveals one surprise after another. Some of the romantic passages, and episodes of yearning after an impossible love ideal, will make you think of THE NOTEBOOK. And for that, there is no higher praise.
Perhaps this book would appeal more to people who live in Maine, where I expect they will be more familiar with the surroundings, and take to Cronin's descriptions of well-loved native land.
It's a good book all around (you definitely get your money's worth).
Rating:
Summary: A Terrific book
Review: Simply put, this is a terrific book.
The primary setting is a fishing camp/resort in northwest Maine. The characters either have run, are running or will be running the place. Their lives have all been touched significantly by one man - the summer guest who has returned to the camp every summer for more than thirty years.
The novel acounts for the six main characters' lives in the present and in reflections of the past. The lives of the camp people are all tightly interwoven, since four are related (father, son and wife and grandson) and the fifth looks like he will marry into the family. What shows through the telling of their stories is the major affect that the summer guest has had on their lives - and them on his.
The novel is written so that chapter to chapter the first person narrative changes from character to character. A legitimate criticism is that Mr. Cronin does not give each a distinctive voice. If I put the book down in mid-chapter, I might have to go back to see who was speaking. The quality of this book well overrides this short-coming, however.
The stories of these characters are interesting, poignant and real. They are accounts of lives, loves and deaths touchingly told. What could have been a soap opera is so artfully told by Mr. Cronin that the book never became maudlin.
The characters are all likeable, yet very different in their own right with very human weaknesses and strengths. They are perhaps the most believable characters I have read of in a long long time. Except possibly for the gift given by the rich summer guest, Mr. Wainwright, the characters and their lives are all believable. There are no superhuman efforts. No pristine pure and perfect people. It is easy to imagine each person and every event. It is a tribute to fine writing and story-telling. By the end of the book, not only does the reader feel as if he knows each character well enough to recognize him on the street, but it is conceivable that such people really do walk the streets - and it would be good to meet them.
This is definitely one of the best books of the year. Read it and weep and laugh.
Rating:
Summary: One of my favorites in 2004
Review: THE SUMMER GUEST by Justin CroninI'm going to preface this by saying this was one of my favorite books this year so far. THE SUMMER GUEST by Justin Cronin is the story of three people - Joe and Lucy Crosby, and a multi-millionaire Harry Wainwright, whose lives are tied together through circumstances involving a fishing camp. The story itself is more emotionally driven than action-driven, and with the beautiful writing skills that Cronin uses, I found this book refreshing and very enjoyable. THE SUMMER GUEST is in part a love triangle. Joe and Lucy meet as teenagers at the fishing camp that Joe's father runs. At the same time, Harry has become a regular customer, but he is already married. Unbeknownst to Lucy, Harry's wife is terminally ill. In the meantime, there is a chemistry between Lucy and Harry that is hard to deny, but her heart belongs to Joe, even when he evades the Vietnam draft and escapes to Canada, leaving her behind in Maine. The story's present day is 1994, and Harry has returned to the camp one last time. He is terminally ill with cancer, and knows this will be his last visit. Joe and Lucy are now married, and they run the camp. They have hired a young man named Jordan to help run it with them, and it is to Jordan that Harry leaves the camp, after buying it from Joe and Lucy, who have decided it is time to let it go. They now have a daughter, Kate, that rounds out the cast of characters, and it is through Kate that the story ends with a final "bang", as a secret is revealed to the reader that ties all of them together. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed the characters that Cronin created in THE SUMMER GUEST. The book spanned several generations and two wars, and the author was able to tie everything together, making the characters to be believable and real. His descriptions of the natural landscape of Maine helped create an atmosphere of idyllic summers and of an age long gone. I would certainly read more of Justin Cronin. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: "What last sweet dreams of life on earth?"
Review: The Summer Guest is probably what serious literary fiction is all about. Beautifully written, with a wonderful evocation of time and place, the novel does a terrific job of transporting the reader to rural Maine, and presenting us with the complex lives and choices of ordinary people from different generations. The technique of presenting the action chapter by chapter, in first person, and from multiple viewpoints is nothing new - recently Leslie Swartz's Angels Crest employed this method - but Cronin does this with such a remarkable talent for description of the natural world, that the reader can't help but be drawn into his images.
Melodramatic in style and tone - but never trite - The Summer Guest is infused with life's big events: birth, death, illness, and a harrowing, watery escape. Set against the backdrop of two wars, and war's shattering effects, the novel is quite remarkable in that it can effectively connect the personal with the historical.
It is 1994 and Harry Wainwright, a terminally ill discount-drugstore mogul, has a dying wish. He wants to make a last visit to the rustic Maine fly-fishing camp where he has vacationed for more than thirty summers. Awaiting his arrival are the camp's longtime owner, Joe, whose father founded the camp after being wounded in the face in World War II, and Joe's wife, Lucy, who had a romantic involvement with Harry when he was younger. Joe and Lucy have a teenage daughter, Kate, a college student who has developed an attraction to Jordan, the club's manager and guide.
Jordan - one of the more interesting characters -is a reclusive loner, who has been living at the camp for years - his loneliness is so fierce and unrequited, "that its like standing in a treeless plain." All of these characters narrate sections of the book, and the world they collectively inhabit is fraught with old-fashioned hazards: Babies are stillborn, or sicken and die, people battle with obscure illnesses, monetary problems rear their ugly head, and the military draft is ever present.
The sheer aliveness of the language makes up for the fact that some of the characters struggle to become particularly interesting. Cronin's critical gift is to provide devastating moments of overwhelming grief combined with a buoyant restraint. From the moment Joe's father climbed the roof of the lodge and looked at the lake, he knew that he had found his life - a place that has the "pure beauty of having been forgotten." And Lucy's observation of Joe and Harry, her two great loves. "There they stayed the two of them mixed together in my mind. Joe and Harry, my handsome boy and this beautiful man who'd blown in from nowhere."
As a story of generational duty and love, The Summer Guest packs a real emotional punch, and it's quite harrowing in its descriptions of how external forces, which are often beyond an individual's control, can ultimately wreak havoc and destroy lives. Some readers may view Cronin's work as merely an intellectually astute exercise in creative writing 101, but this reader found his work visually quite stimulating and ultimately deeply satisfying. Mike Leonard November 04.
Rating:
Summary: What a novel is all about
Review: This book is perfect literature. It tells a story of many characters through many times all tied together by a special place. More importantly it draws the reader in and evokes true emotion. Cronin's writing reminds me of Gabriel Marquez in his ability to succinctly yet richly describe the mundane, making everything seem beautiful. I would give it ten stars if possible.
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