Summer Island: A Novel

“‘You give moral advice, Nora.’ Bob shook his head. ‘This is going to be a hell of a scandal. Jesus, we’ve been promoting you as a modern version of Mother Teresa. Now it turns out you’re Debbie Does Dallas.’”

Nora has cultivated the public persona of the ideal mother and wise confidant. Her employer feels that her nude photos shatter that image, revealing The Consequences of Fame and Maintaining Appearances. Notably, the photos only made it into the public sphere because of Nora’s fame, implying that celebrities are not afforded the same privacy as non-celebrities. The above quote also depicts misogyny, and how women are often seen as existing in a binary—as “Mother Teresa” or “Debbie Does Dallas.”

“Her mother had once had to make a choice like this. She could have chosen her husband and her daughters…or her career. Without a backward glance, Nora Bridge had chosen herself.”

Throughout her life, Ruby has believed that Nora left the family to pursue her career and gain fame and fortune. Ruby uses this excuse to justify writing a brutal article on her mother, and, in the process, reveals that she is more like Nora than she’d like to admit.

“She knew that if she looked hard enough, she would be able to find the invisible trail she’d left behind, the pieces of her that led from the present back to the past.”

Ruby is initially hesitant to return to the summer house because it reminds her too much of her greatest failure: breaking Dean’s heart. However, her return to allows her to see The Healing Power of Forgiveness and Releasing the Past. In returning, she reconciles with her past and begins her future.

“Her mother had always been made of steel. Even as a young girl, Ruby had known her mother’s strength. The other kids in her class were afraid of their fathers when report cards came out. Not the Bridge girls. They lived in fear of disappointing their mother.”

Initially, Ruby is initially unable to let go of her preconceived notions about Nora, which creates tension between the two women. However, she is soon able to see her mother’s vulnerability, allowing her to acknowledge her own.

“She’d thought she could come home again, that women were granted the same latitude in marriage that men were. How naive she had been.”

When Nora initially left her family, she assumed that the same grace she extended to Rand in their marriage would be extended to her. Instead, she was family ostracized her. Their behavior foreshadows how her adoring public will act when her photographs are released without her consent. Instead of giving her grace, her fans tear her apart.

“Nora gently took hold of her daughter’s hand. Seeing that blood—her child’s—made Nora’s own hand throb. Just like old times; Nora had always experienced a phantom pain whenever one of her kids was hurt. She carefully coiled the towel around the wound, and without thinking, wrapped her own hands around Ruby’s.”

At first, Ruby tries to do anything and everything in her power to maintain distance from Nora. However, when she cuts herself while helping Nora cook dinner, the two women fall back into their established mother-and-daughter roles, opening the door for a later reconciliation.

“If he could get Eric out here for an afternoon—just that, a single afternoon—maybe the wind and the sea could take them back in time.”

The Sloan family’s sailboat symbolizes The Healing Power of Forgiveness and Releasing the Past. By restoring the boat, Dean indicates that he is ready to find peace and forgiveness in his relationships with both Eric and Ruby.

“Ruby wanted to be angry, but in truth, she was too battered. The movies had hurt so much she couldn’t think straight. For the first time in years, she’d seen Mom.”

Ruby initially struggles to refer to Nora as her “mom”; she is still too hurt to act kindly or lovingly toward her. However, when Nora and Ruby watch old family videos together, Ruby remembers this past Nora—her mom—and begins to long for her.

“Force her to remember you.

The answer came easily when offered to a stranger.

Nora smiled. If she forced Ruby to remember the past, they could possibly find their way into the present…maybe even peek at a different future.”

When Nora is unsure how to repair her relationship with Nora, she pretends she is answering a reader’s letter. She is able to take her own advice and see how she can reconnect with Ruby: by finally putting the past aside and focusing on their joint future together.

“It seems I don’t know either one of us. My mother tells me now that she is going to walk away from her career. I don’t know what to make of that. She traded our family for fame and fortune; how could it mean so little to her?”

As Ruby writes her article, she begins to wonder how much of her identity is tied up in her mother’s. Additionally, she starts to unravel the long-held misassumption that her mother abandoned her for her career, leading to the revelation of a family secret.

“The doctor smiled coolly for the camera. ‘Certainly a public figure has a right to his or her secrets…unless and until those secrets become germane.’”

While many people criticize Nora for the nude photos, few people consider if Nora is entitled to some level of privacy, despite her fame. Additionally, the above critic ignores the good Nora has done for people, instead focusing on how uneducated she is, something that is only relevant now that people view her as unethical and morally bad.

“She couldn’t imagine what to say next, how to answer. She had missed him, too—missed him so much—and it hurt to know that she would go on missing him until she was an old woman. A more bendable, trusting person could have changed the future in this very moment, but Ruby couldn’t imagine that kind of strength.”

Despite realizing that she still loves Dean, Ruby cannot bring herself to admit her feelings for him, because she is too afraid of getting hurt again by someone she loves. As a result, Ruby does what feels most comfortable to her: She runs away from the situation.

“For the first time, she considered the impact of her article. She’d agreed to write it because she’d wanted to hurt her mother, to strike back for all the pain she’d suffered as a young girl.

But she wasn’t a child anymore.”

The above quote portrays a milestone in Ruby’s growth. As Ruby writes the article about Nora, she shifts her perception of not only Nora but also of her own maturity. She realizes that her initial desire to harm Nora was a childish instinct, and that she is no longer interested in acting like a child.

“She had roots here, a past that grew deep into the rich black island soil.”

The island is an oasis and place of emotional healing for Ruby, Nora, and Eric. Ruby often focuses on her negative memories of the island. However, by focusing on the island’s beauty, it is clear that Ruby’s past—and her future—are bright and full of possibilities.

“He was her youth, she realized sadly, a youth that was neither well spent nor quite misspent. Just…spent.”

As Nora reflects on her relationship with Rand, she realizes that the time they spent together was neither good nor bad. This shows that she has grown over time and can now see her past with more forgiving eyes.

“One thing she knew: her novelization of the past, with Dad cast as hero and her mother as villain, wouldn’t work anymore.”

After Ruby learns the truth—that Rand cheated on Nora repeatedly, which ultimately led to Nora’s decision to leave the family—she realizes that she must rethink how she sees the world. She notes that viewing her parents as the archetypes of “hero” and “villain” is childish, and that she must mature to see them as the dynamic people they truly are.

“My mother didn’t leave him—and us—for fame and fortune, but simply because she was human, and the man she loved had broken her heart.”

As Ruby continues to write her article, she realizes the truth about her mother’s secret: Nora left the family to protect her own mental health and not to pursue fame and fortune. As a result, Ruby begins to rethink her own reasons for writing the tell-all, especially since it will cost her her newfound relationship with Nora.

“‘She’s not who we thought, Caro,’ she said softly, realizing that she’d said the words before, but without truly knowing their power.”

As time goes on, Ruby realizes that the person she assumed Nora was—hard, unloving, and selfish—is not at all who Nora actually is. Instead, Nora is a gateway between the past and the future for her daughters and can allow them to finally heal.

“Her fear of abandonment was so deep it had calcified in her bones. She couldn’t get past it. She’d discovered a long time ago why the poets called it falling in love. It was a plunging, eye-watering descent, and she’d lost her ability to believe that anyone would catch her.”

Despite knowing she loves Dean—and knowing Dean loves her—Ruby struggles to be vulnerable. Instead, she shuts herself off from him and others, leaving herself to wallow in the continued pain of her childhood. When she allows herself to open up, she is rewarded with a deep emotional connection. In this way, the novel shows the value of making oneself vulnerable. The above quote uses a metaphor, comparing something to something else without using “like” or “as.” In this case, falling in love is compared to literally descending.

“I never noticed that I’d be standing on my mother’s broken back to reach the microphone.”

Ruby ultimately realizes that to be famous, she will have to disparage Nora’s reputation. Because all of their family secrets and the pain associated with them have dissipated, she no longer is interested in fame if it comes at the cost of a relationship with her mother. The above quote also uses a metaphor, comparing Nora’s tarnished reputation to a “broken back.”

“Nora’s heart felt as if it were breaking. Here was another legacy of her motherhood: she’d taught her children that marriages were disposable.”

Nora lost many years with her daughters, leading her to feel that she left a negative legacy for them. When Caroline considers leaving her marriage because she is having trouble with her husband, Nora realizes that, by keeping the secret of her marriage to herself, she has set her daughters up to repeat her mistakes.

“I was right to trust you, Ruby. I knew it when I finished reading. You listened and you wrote, and when it was over, you’d revealed me.”

Nora is initially upset by Ruby’s decision to write the article. However, once she reads it, she is moved by the dynamic and full portrait that Ruby has painted of her. Seeing her daughter write about her life with honesty and pride allows Nora to find the strength to fight back against the media.

“A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep in her bones. This I know now.”

Following the article’s publication and her newfound fame, Ruby realizes that, without her mother, she is not whole. She now knows that without her mother, she will never be a full person. The above quote uses metaphors, comparing a motherless daughter to “a woman broken” and the loss of a mother to physical phenomena such as arthritis.