It's Not Summer Without You

An important theme in the text is how humans cope with loss. Each character has their own way of grieving Susannah’s death. The book explores how grief affects each character differently and how they struggle in seeking the support they need from one another in the wake of such a great loss. Ultimately, they find purpose in their grief by saving the Cousins Beach house, a symbol of Susannah’s enduring memory.

Adam Fisher’s grief at losing his wife—compounded by the guilt of cheating on her and only reconciling with her shortly before her death—pushes him to want to sell the Cousins Beach house. When he tries to rationalize his decision to Laurel, he states, crying: “She’s everywhere, she’s everywhere” (232). His way of coping with his own guilt and Susannah’s death is by trying to shed the weight of the place that meant the most to her and her sons.

It is Laurel’s task to convince Adam to not sell the house, and she does so by reframing the house as a legacy and a memorial rather than a burden of guilt. Laurel derives a newfound sense of purpose in this mission, whereas for much of the text she is caught in a haze of grief. Her grief causes her to push Belly away and withdraw emotionally, which she only apologizes for after a fight between her and Belly: “You’re right. I’ve been absent. I’ve been so consumed with my own grief, I haven’t reached out to you. I’m sorry for that” (215). By convincing Adam not to sell, Laurel can do something with her grief rather than let it fester and consume her. Much of the text is concerned with this learning to take action to express feelings rather than keeping them buried.

The children Susannah leaves behind each struggle with their grief in different ways. Conrad refuses help from anyone or to share his emotions, but he puts his college education at risk to go to Cousins Beach to prevent his father from selling the house. Finally, Belly realizes, Conrad has stopped running from his grief: “Conrad didn’t just run away to surf. He didn’t run away for the sake of running away. He came to save the house” (146). Whereas Conrad typically avoids his emotions, Jeremiah desperately wants someone to witness his grief: “I want to talk about her. But Conrad doesn’t want to, and I can’t talk to my dad, and you weren’t there either. We all love her, and nobody can talk about her” (258). This admission inspires Belly to want to make a change: “Jeremiah had been there for Conrad, for Susannah. For me. And who had been there for him? Nobody. I wanted him to know I was here now” (258). Belly decides to no longer use her grief as an excuse to avoid and withdraw and instead to help support Jeremiah through his own grief. Her new resolution shows a movement toward emotional maturity in occasionally attending to the needs of others.

For much of the text, Belly avoids her grief by refusing to confront it, which she is able to do with some success until she goes back to the Cousins Beach house to look for Conrad: “Not thinking about Susannah, consciously not thinking about her, made it easier. Because then she wasn’t really gone. She was just off someplace else [...] here, at the summer house, she was everywhere” (137). Belly cannot avoid her grief any longer once she is at the house, and she realizes that her own method of coping, avoidance, has caused pain for Jeremiah.

The characters in the text navigate their grief imperfectly, at times hurting others unintentionally as they try to process their own feelings. What they do realize through sharing and working together to save the house is that grief can be used as a catalyzing and unifying force to preserve the memory of the loved one they have lost.