I’ve become fond of the mid-20th Century mystery writer Stanley Ellin. I already recognized that he was an essentially good writer, not just a clever creator of smart mysteries. Still, I wasn’t prepared for what I found in his novel The Winter After This Summer, which qualifies as a mystery, I guess, but is more of a literary novel.
We first meet our hero, Dan Egan, as he is being expelled from his college. The fraternity house where he lived burned down the previous night, killing his best friend and roommate, the football hero Ben Genarro. Everyone blames Dan for failing to save Ben – and Dan himself is not entirely sure what happened.
Dan is the child of a somewhat tense marriage alliance between new money and old money, uniting two wealthy families in awkward coexistence. Refusing relatives’ offers of easy jobs, Dan instead goes to work in a shipyard, learning the mysteries of that dying craft. He tells us about his life, especially his disappointed love for Mia, Ben Genarro’s sister, who rejected him to marry into the American elite.
We also meet Barbara Jean Avery, a stunningly beautiful young woman who has escaped poverty in the Florida Keys, dreaming of James Dean and Hollywood. Mentally, she is an entirely ordinary girl, but Dan seizes on her beauty, dreaming of making her into a better version of Mia. Unfortunately, Barbara Jean has a husband, who is older and a religious madman. Their inevitable collision will bring the story to its climax
The Winter After This Summer qualifies technically as a mystery, I suppose, because it begins with an unexplained death – but that death is never actually explained. It’s more about Dan struggling with his personal background and trying to find his authentic self. The book could almost be described as Christian (Ellin in fact converted to Quakerism later in life), though the best Christian character in the book has fairly iffy theology. Readers should be cautioned about rough, realistic language and fairly frank sexual scenes.
I think my final take on The Winter After This Summer is that it’s one of those works that’s too smart for me. In the end, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to take away from it. But it was a rewarding reading experience.